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FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

Books of Topical Interest.
The Russian Campaign.

The second 5erie5 0f Field Notes.

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Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

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LONDON! ANDREW MELROSL LTD.

l^f'f^il^^llii'lllJfMi'^k'^Mi.^^^

Ferdinand the Ambitious gazing from liis Euxinograd
Palace across the Black Sea towards Constantinople.

[To face title page.

^/

FERDINAND OF
BULGARIA

THE AMAZING CAREER OF
A SHODDY CZAR

By the Author of
"THE REAL KAISER"

LONDON : ANDREW MELROSE, LTD.

3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

1916

CONTENTS

OHAP. PAoa

Inteoductory . .... 9

I A Pot-house Pbince .... 17

II The Tba-ining of ▲ Tbaitob . . .27

III Learning the Ropes .... 87

IV The Man who would be King . . 47
V The Compleat Bachelob ... 66

VI The Bboken-hearted Princess . . 66

VII An Apostate by Pboxy. . . .73

VIII The Butchebed " Bissiaeioe " . .81

IX The Dead Hand 03

X Who ABE THE Bulgarians T . . . 105

XI Febdinand and his Cbeatubes . .116

XII Febdinand the Feminine . . .126

XIII Febdinand and the Bulgabians . .135

XIV Febdinand the Ambitious . . . 147

XV Febdinand the Futile .... 157

XVI Febdinand the Fbenchman . . .167

XVII Febdinand the Faithless . . . 177

5

6

CONTENTS

CHAP.

paoe

XVIII

Febdinand TKJfl Httn

. 187

XIX

Ferdinand the Czab

. 197

XX

Ferdinand and the Balkan League

. 207

XXI

Ferdinand the Martyr

. 217

XXII

Ferdinand in Retirement .

. 227

XXIII

Ferdinand the False .

. 237

XXIV

KuLTUR IN Bulgaria

. 247

XXV

Ferdinand and the Farmer .

. 255

XXVI

Ferdinand as War Lord

. 263

XXVII

Ferdinand in Extremis

. 273

INTRODUCTORY

INTRODUCTORY

" T T rHO is that evil-looking Dago ? " asked
VV an Australian friend ; " lie looks as
though he had never been outside a horse in
his life."

We were gazing at the procession of royalties
who followed the body of King Edward VII
through his mourning capital. The Dago in
question was Ferdinand, Czar of the Bulgarians ;
and one could not but recognize the truth of the
Colonial's brutal description.

He wore, it may be remembered, an Astrakan
cap and coat ; and the day was a warm one.
His fat figure swayed from side to side in the
saddle, and he looked thoroughly frightened of
the magnificent horse he bestrode with so ill a
grace. The perspiration dropped down his
flabby cheeks.

He was not in the sort of company where he
was calculated to shine. All around him were
princes who would not be seen speaking to him.
The London crowd hardly knew who he was,

9

10 FEEDINAl^D OF BTJLGAEIA

and betrayed less interest in him than it would
have shown in the latest coloured monarch from
the wilds of Africa.

His bright, shifty eyes turned here and there,
vainly seeking something friendly and familiar.
No doubt but Ferdinand made a poor showing
on his last visit to London ; the very last, possibly,
that he will ever be allowed to pay to the capital
of the British Empire.

But I ventured at the time to predict to my
friend from the Antipodes that he would one
day hear a good deal more of Czar Ferdinand
than he had hitherto learned. For though he
was then an unconsidered personage in English-
speaking countries, he already enjoyed quite
another reputation upon the Continent of Europe.
I explained that he was half a Frenchman,
and that in Paris, where notabilities are summed
up more surely than anywhere else in the wide
world, he was esteemed by no means a negligible
quantity.

Berlin, I said, had already put him down as
a man with a price, and was only seeking to find
how great was the price that must be paid.
Austria — the new Austria, as represented by the
clever heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand — still
looked askance at him, but was determined to
make him a friend before he should have returned
to amity with Eussia.

INTEODUCTOEY 11

Eussia had against his name the big black
cross that is never obliterated in the secret
archives of the White Empire, if the gossips of
the Chancelleries are to be believed. Finally, in
the Balkan States, still the slums of Europe by
force of circumstances, he was the man to whom
politicians looked for the next move.

I little guessed what world-shaking conse-
quences were to derive from that move. But I
was able to say enough to my friend to awaken
in him a new interest in the man whom his
sturdy Colonialism led him to describe as an
" evil-looking Dago."

Since then I have seen Ferdinand in varying
circumstances, all of which have tended to
increase my interest in him, without in any
way adding to the sum of my liking for him, and
all that he represents.

I can see him now, riding into Sofia in triumph,
with a wreath of green leaves around his head,
and a band of victorious Bulgarian warriors as
his escort. It was the first time Sofia had ever
really acclaimed him, and he looked almost
human as he acknowledged the ringing plaudits
of a people that was wont to turn away its face
as he rode by.

I remember him, too, in Paris ; at Longchamps
the day of the Grand Prix. The elaborate
precautions made that day by the police to pre-

12 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

vent any of those untoward incidents of which
he has lived in dread for a quarter of a century
spoiled the whole day for the Parisians. It was
impossible to move about the lawn without
encountering cordons of gendarmes, placed there
to afford a wide breathing space for the imitation
Czar.

I also saw him at Carlsbad, very much at home
among the Austrians, who are really the people
of his choice. He maintained a monstrous
state there, and his comings and goings were as
good as any spectacle I have seen.

And always, wherever I encountered him, I
heard stories. They were not nice stories, for
he was the hero of them. But they represented
the Continental opinion that he was distinctly a
man of consequence ; a man who would one day
bulk big in the world's history.

All these stories threw a bright light on the
character of the supposed useless fop, who made
Bismarck reverse his first contemptuous estimate
of him. The final judgment of the old cynic
was that Ferdinand was " a sharp young
fellow." They confounded entirely the British
view of him, which has recently had to be
revised.

For it is only too true that our attitude was
that of the Eugby schoolboy. " We have heard
of the Kaiser ; and the Czar and the French

mTKODUCTOET 13

President are our good friends. But who on
earth is King Ferdinand of Bulgaria ? "

The answer is plain to be read. He is the
parvenu of princes, the outcast among Kings,
the Czar of Shoddy. His history and habits,
his ambitions and abilities, his amusements and
amours, as far as I have been able to trace them,
are set out in the following chronicle.

A POT-HOUSE PRINCE

" The Prince of Bulgaria, if there exists in the world a
being unfortunate enotigh to take up that position."

— Bismarck.

CHAPTEE I
A POT-HOUSE PRINCE

ONE day in December, 1886, there slouched
into Eonacher's Circus, a well-known
Vienna beer garden, three weary Bulgarian poli-
ticians. Some weeks before they had left Sofia
full of importance, and very pleased with them-
selves. In their ears were ringing the injunctions
of Stambuloff, the " Bismarck of Bulgaria," and
they were under no kind of misapprehension as
to their mission.

They were to come back with a Prince, and
not until they had got one dare they show their
faces in Sofia again. He was to be a presentable
Prince, young, wealthy, a soldier, and, above
all, powerfully connected. It seemed easy enough
to them, for they were patriotic Bulgarians, and
thought that all the unoccupied Princes of Europe
would compete for so proud a position as that
of Prince of Bulgaria. Possibly their phantasy

17 B

18 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

was not shared by the wise old man who sent
them out on their mission ; for it is recorded
that he grinned sardonically as he saw them go.

From Court to Court they went, hawking
the vacant principality and receiving the most
surprising rebuffs. They offered the place to
the Grand Duke Vladimir of Eussia, and he
refused it with a rude promptness. Valdemar
of Denmark listened to all they had to say, and
said he would write and let them know. His
answer was in the negative. From Prince Carol
of Eumania they received a refusal startling in
its emphasis. They rubbed their heads, and
decided to try more tentative measures.

Hither and thither they went, hinting at the
great opportunity that offered for an enter-
prising young Prince. Their overtures were
everywhere received with a chilliness that was
rigid in its iciness. They thought of grim old
Stambuloff waiting at home for news, and trudged
manfully on to another Court. Soon they
realized that they were the laughing-stock of
Europe.

So they found their way to Vienna, which
was as near home as they dared to venture, and
determined to spend a little time in a well-earned
vacation from the task of Prince-hunting. Their
steps were guided to the famous beer garden by
a very pleasant acquaintance they had made in

A POT-HOUSE PEmCE 19

the Austrian pleasure city ; and there they
rested, well content with a cool drink and a
friendly chat.

And while they rested, there came on the
scene a Major Laabe, to whom they were intro-
duced by their Viennese friend, who was a smooth-
spoken individual of slightly Jewish appearance.
Major Laabe was an individual of quite another
type, a dashing Austrian cavalry officer who
knew everybody and everything. He was sym-
pathetic to the travel-worn Bulgars, and over a
bottle or two of wine they confided to him their
mission, and its lack of result.

It was then that the Major sprang to his feet
and slapped his deerskin riding breeches of
spotless white in pure amazement and joy.
" Why," he cried, " I know the very man you
want ; and by a strange coincidence he is here
on this very spot. He is Ferdinand of Saxe-
Coburg and Gotha, grandson of Louis Philippe
of France, and cousin of every crowned head in
Europe. He is a prime favourite of both the
Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia. And,
my boys, don't say I told you so, but he is as
rich as Croesus."

Grekoff, Galtcheff, and Stoiloff — such were the
names of the three simple Bulgars — looked at
one another with glistening eyes. It seemed too
good to be true. " Come along with me," ui'ged

20 FEEDINAl^D OF BULGAEIA

the genial Major, " and be presented to him.
He's just in here," and he led the way to the
billiard-room.

There the eyes of the three men from Sofia
fell upon a tall young man of twenty-six, who
with a billiard cue in his hand, was walking
round the table with a gait that was curious in
its mincing affectation. He was clad in the
uniform of an Austrian sub-lieutenant, and was
really quite a beautiful thing in the way of
princes.

His face was remarkable for its length, and for
the cruel hook that marked the prominent nose.
The eyes were bright with intelligence, the lips
thin and set tight. And in his right eye he
wore a monocle with a gilt rim, a rarer embellish-
ment to a young man in those days than in these.
As they watched him he posed for the shot — a
difficult cannon — and made it with infinite skill
and appearance of ease. Then moving to take
his place for another shot, he let the monocle
fall from his eye and turned and faced them
squarely. But even then they noticed that he
did not look at them.

Introductions were made, and soon the five
men were seated at a table by a quiet bar, with
opened bottles before them. In less than half
an hour the three Bulgarians were offering this
young exquisite the post which all the young

A POT-HOUSE PEINCB 21

princes of Europe had refused in quick succession,
and he was staring at them through his monocle
with a regard in which shyness and impudence
were blended.

At heart he was furious. He had been waiting
for this offer for weeks. He and his mother had
talked of nothing else. But these clods from
the least civilized of the Balkan States had
ignored him ; had actually been unaware of his
existence. So, as they eagerly set out the
advantages of their offer, and pressed for its
instant acceptance, he smiled sardonically, and
framed the words of his answer.

When he delivered it, it filled them with
dismay. Very quietly he expressed his sense
of the honour they had done him, and of his
own unworthiness for so important a post.
Then he reminded them that the Powers of
Europe must be consulted before he could safely
accept. With remarkable cunning he made
them feel that, should he accept, he would be
doing them a favour. Then he dismissed them,
greatly abashed.

Some months later, however, they were received
at the Coburg palace in Vienna, and overwhelmed
with flatteries by his clever old mother. DiflGi-
culties were discussed, their power to make th«
offer questioned, and a great show of wealth
and influence, both of which the Princess Clemen-

22 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

tine certainly possessed, was made. Eventually
an arrangement was reached whereby Stoiloff
should visit the Princess's country palace at
Ebenthal, bringing with him two influential
Bulgarians of the mission, Vinarofl and Popoff.

This last was a stern old warrior and a keen
judge of men. Ferdinand received them in a
gorgeous reception-room, surrounded already by
the state of a reigning prince. By a writing-
table near the window sat the keen-faced old
woman who had spent half her life to fulfil her
ambition of seating her son upon a throne.

The ordeal was almost too much for Ferdinand.
He stood there, affecting the ease he had acquired
in his pilgrimages through the Courts of Europe.
But old Popoff could smell the perfume with
which he reeked, and could see the nervous
trembling of his hands as he sought to evade
his warrior eye. But for the inspiring presence
of his mother, Ferdinand might have thrown
away the chance for which his boyhood and
young manhood had been spent. But he got
through somehow ; the offer was made and
accepted, conditionally upon the consent of the
Powers being given to it.

Then Ferdinand entered upon an experience
as strange and disheartening as that of the men
who had sought him out to make him prince.
He found everywhere that the proposal was

A POT-HOUSE PEINCE 23

received with a surprised distaste. Not all his
mother's tact and influence could make anybody
look upon the choice with a favourable eye.
The only encouragement he got — if it was encour-
agement— came from Bismarck, whose advice to
his predecessor arose in his mind at this crisis
in his affairs.

" Take it ! " said the cynical old Prussian
to Alexander of Battenberg. " It will at least
be a pleasant reminiscence."

Three weeks passed, and Stambuloff began to
demand his prince most urgently. The argument
about waiting for the consent of the Powers
was ignored by the Statesman. Ferdinand was
warned in unmistakable terms that the offer
was only open for a few more days. He must
come now, or never. Then, forgetting all his
protestations that he would only accept if the
Powers endorsed the choice of Bulgaria, Ferdinand
went.

He went with a cant phrase in his mouth ;
he has spouted miles of such stuff in the quarter-
century and more that has since elapsed. But
this first piece of cant that fell from the lips of
the new prince caused the Courts of Europe to
smile and the Chancelleries to chuckle.

" I regard it as my sacred duty to set foot at
the earliest possible moment on the soil of my
new counti'y."

24 PEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Thus the Pot-house Prince, who bargained
for a principality in a beer garden, and who was
introduced to the first of his new subjects in a
billiard-room through the mediation of a Jewish
moneylender and a needy Austrian man-about-
town.

But Ferdinand did not care ; he had got the
job which had been dangled before his eyes
since first he could remember. He had fulfilled
his mother's dearest wish, and got his foot in
among the Rulers of Europe.

THE TRAINING OF A TRAITOR

"He lived in an atmosphere of womanly luxury, so that
sweet perfumes and pretty flowers became necessaries of life
to him."

CHAPTEE II
THE TRAINING OF A TRAITOR

FEEDINAND owed his principality to his
mother, Princess Clementine of Orleans,
the youngest and cleverest daughter of the
French King Louis Philippe. He owed also his
capacity for filling the position to the training
bestowed upon him by that truly remarkable
woman. It was a peculiar training, for he was
trained to fill a hypothetical throne. Make a
king of him, was his mother's motto, and the
kingdom is sure to turn up some day.

Clementine of Orleans was one of the stormy
petrels of European inner politics. " The Czar's
nightmare, the Austrian Emperor's bogey, and
Bismarck's sleeping draught " had been the
epigrammatic description of the role she played,
thrown off after deep consideration by an English
diplomatist who worked out his impromptus
very thoroughly.

27

28 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

She had married Prince Augustus of Saxe-
Coburg Kohary, and by the Kohary hangs a tale.
It was supposed by the vulgar to be an additional
title, but it really was an excrescence on the
Saxe-Coburg appellation, tacked on in return for
some millions in hard cash. The original Kohary
was a swindling army contractor whose name in
England would be Cohen. He had made untold
wealth by a system of army contracting which
has its feeble imitators at the present day, and
he cherished high ambitions for his pretty daughter
Tony.

She, and her wealth, attracted the notice of
that poverty-stricken prince, Ferdinand of Saxe-
Coburg, grandfather of Bulgaria's elect. The
wedding and the dowry were arranged, and the
condition exacted by the man of millions was
that the Kohary should appear in the princely
title. So it was ; though Prince Augustus, at
the instigation of his spouse Clementine, dropped
the Cohen as soon as he conscientiously could.
But there it was, and when, many years afterwards,
Ferdinand of Bulgaria was able to address a
deputation of Jewish merchants in their native
Yiddish, gossips recalled a circumstance which
explained why he was the only European ruler
who could claim such an accomplishment.

But the Princess Clementine moved in a circle
that had the discernment to see that the brand

Ferdinand's Mother, Princess Clementine,
at the age of 82.

[To face page 29.

THE TEAINING OF A TEAITOE 29

of Kohary was not upon her. She bore rather
the stamp of the Bourbons, and to the very last
of her extreme old age preserved the aristocratic
air that became a daughter of Louis Philippe.
She inherited immense wealth, and knew how
to take care of it. Two passions possessed her
in her life. The first was to restore the mon-
archical line in France, and to that end she plotted
skilfully and unsuccessfully. The other was to
realize in the person of her youngest son a prophecy
that affected her most profoundly when it was
delivered, and obtained a greater hold upon her
with each succeeding year of her life.

The prophecy was delivered by a very old and
unsightly gipsy woman who cajoled the Princess
into permitting an inspection of her hand. The
sybil declared that one of the sons of Clementine
would one day reign a crowned king. The fore-
cast was in accordance with the ambition and
training of this remarkable woman, who at once
decided that Ferdinand, the youngest and bright-
est of her boys, must be the instrument of its
fulfilment.

She had sat at the feet of the most astute
statesmen of her time, and had earned the appel-
lation of " a Talleyrand in petticoats." Those
who knew her best believed fondly that she was
beyond all delusions ; they learned their error
when they found what schemes she was cherishing

30 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

for the unlovable Ferdinand. She set her heart
upon a throne for him, though what throne she
could not even dimly discern.

The kind of education this boy received from
the sparkling, cynical, witty Frenchwoman can
be imagined. Every step of his career is eloquent
of the lessons he learned, and of how well he
learned them. She taught him that love was a
weak passion, since it gave some clinging woman
the right to impose herself as a burden upon a
strong man. She taught him the value of
influential friends, and how to take any amount
of snubbing from any one who might eventually
be of use to him.

From Court to Court of Europe she dragged
him at an age when most boys are immersed in
manly sports and the hard regime of ordinary
education. He became the most accomplished
young prince in all Europe in the matter of
modern languages, though by a strange over-
sight she never caused him to learn Bulgarian.
He knew everybody, and was seen everywhere.
Not one of his great pack of relatives escaped
his acquaintance ; she insinuated to them, one
and all, that in his case the claims of consan-
guinity could not be overlooked.

She inspired in him a feminine horror of being
deceived. To this day he dreads that possibility
more than anything else, save only assassination.

THE TEAINING OF A TRAITOE 31

No better training in the art of deception could
possibly be devised than to keep a youth con-
stantly on the look-out for deception. At a
comparatively early age Ferdinand became a
past master in all the arts of simulation and
deceit.

The masculine side of his education was neg-
lected. He never learned to play games like
other boys ; he never learned the ordinary
accomplishment of princes, the mastery of a
horse. He lived in an atmosphere of womanly
luxury, so that sweet perfumes and pretty
flowers became necessaries of life to him.

He was by nature a fop. All the arts of
dandyism were practised by him, his clothes
affected his gait. He flitted from Court to
Court, and the more formal the Court the greater
his admiration for it. Display was to him a
part of kingship ; one of the most tangible and
real attributes of royalty.

Thus, although he had not the most remote
hope of legitimate succession to a throne, at
twenty he was possessed of a complete theory
of kingship. His mother, who appraised the
whole world at its most just value, and could
discriminate between the instant value of a
King of England and a Czar of Russia, gave to
him the undiscriminating worship that she
denied to any other human being, even in a

32 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

fractional degree. But there was no sign of the
throne for which he had been so carefully trained.

Therefore, at the age of twenty Ferdinand
had to join the Austrian Army as a sub-lieu-
tenant. He was no soldier by nature, and his
training had unfitted him for the vocation in a
marked degree. He had inherited a nervous
disposition, that made the occupation selected
for him a lifelong misery. His first commission
was in a cavalry regiment, but his execrable
horsemanship soon caused him to be transferred
to a foot regiment. It was as a lieutenant of
Jaegers that he was apparelled on that memor-
able day when the tired Bulgarian envoys first
saw him in the Vienna beer garden.

The clever old woman and the calculating
young man had been expecting them. The net
was spread and richly baited from the millions
of Clementine. All that money and cunning
could do to win him the vacant princedom
had been done. The result has already been
told.

His mother trained Ferdinand for a throne,
and her influence and her wealth made for him
the opportunity. As his story is unfolded, we
shall see her continually at his elbow, prompting
him in all the tangled affairs of his statecraft.
Her love for him never waned, and to the last
he was the object of adoration of the most

THE TKAINING OF A TEAITOR 33

sophisticated woman that ever adorned a Court
in Europe.

Her death deprived him of the best counsellor
and the most powerful friend that such a prince
has ever been known to possess. The gap it
left in his councils will be illustrated in the course
of this narrative. She died in her beloved Vienna
in February, 1907, at the age of eighty-nine.
Her three sons, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Augustus
son-in-law of the deposed Emperor of Brazil,
and Philip, son-in-law of King Leopold of the
Belgians, stood at her bedside as she passed
away.

The thing she had lived to bring about had
not yet come to pass. Ferdinand made himself
Czar of the Bulgarians in 1908. The poor old
Princess died just a year too soon.

LEARNING THE ROPES

" The position is not particularly briUiant, but where is a
better one to be found ? I am a reigning Prince." — ^Ferdi-
nand or BULQABIA.

CHAPTEE III
LEARNING THE ROPES

WHEN Ferdinand found it was his " sacred
duty " to occupy the vacant Principality
without loss of time, he disguised himself and
fled from Vienna. His initial disguise was that
of a Viennese cab-driver, but he changed several
times before he arrived in Sofia disguised as a
Bulgarian general. He has lived a substantial
portion of his life in various disguises since that
day.

If one had any pity to spare for such a malig-
nant creature, one might almost pity him his first
experiences in Bulgaria. The Bulgars did not
know him, but his reputation had preceded him
from the mouth of that Popoff who had inspected
him so critically in the reception-room of his
mother's summer palace. The envoys were bom-
barded with questions on their return, and those
most responsible for the choice mustered up

37

38 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

enough courage to describe him as " most dip-
lomatic."

This was hardly what the Bulgars had been
led to expect, and the wise men noted that
Popoff held his speech. This led to direct
questions, and Popoff let out his opinion.
" Pah ! " says he, " scented like a civet." And
the Bulgarians, who make scent but do not use
it, never forgot the description.

Ferdinand had been elected to fill the shoes
of a prince who had been kidnapped for his
virtues and abilities. The dashing Alexander
of Battenberg is a popular hero of his people, a
warrior Prince whom the rough Bulgarian peasants
could understand and love. There comes to
take his place a finicking, fine gentleman with
an eyeglass in his eye, who shows up in the capital
for the first time in a general's uniform, but
riding in a carriage. As a matter of fact, he was
in such a state of nervous terror that it would
not have been safe to let him mount a horse.

And what a country for such an exquisite to
rule ! Bulgaria in 1915 is bad enough, but
words fail to paint the primitive savagery of the
country in 1887. Sofia, the capital, was little
more than a glorified village, and the new Prince
bumped hideously over the ruts in the streets as
his carriage passed to the palace. Nearly twenty
years later, one of the most tactful great ladies

LEAENING THE EOPES 39

of Europe, wisliing to pay Ferdinand a compliment
on the great improvement wrought in his capital
since his accession, said sweetly:

" I do love Sofia, the railway makes it so easy
to run over to Vienna for a little gaiety."

But even that reason for leaving Sofia did
not exist when this cuckoo Prince first drove
down its main street.

Bulgarian was one of the few languages his
mother had not added to his list of accomplish-
ments, and his hope that his perfect French
would carry him through triumphantly was only
partly justified. He found many of the most
important men of State knew no language but
their own, and these he failed to comprehend as
completely as they him.

The motley races of this Principality were of
all colours and creeds. Bulgars, Serbians, gipsies,
Turks, Circassians, Jews, Armenians, Tartars,
Eussians, Eumanians, Albanians, then as now,
were all huddled together cheek by jowl. They
were all as strange to him as would have been a
race of Maoris. But if he felt any misgivings
about his new r61e in life he did not display them.
Indeed, he was ready with a cant explanation
of his acceptance of the responsibility, and of
his flight from Vienna in an ignoble guise.

" I did not seek the Bulgarian crown. It was
offered to me with the assurance that I could do

40 FBEDINAND OF BULGARIA

much good in the country. The mission was a
noble one, and I accepted it."

His idea of Eoyalty was centred in the state-
liest pageants of the most formal Courts of
Europe. He had had a wide experience of Courts,
and knew exactly the extreme of outward show
that was employed to hedge the greatest mon-
archs of Christendom. He established a cere-
monial that outdid them all. It was Ferdinand's
way of asserting his own importance in a princi-
pality where the Prince was treated like an idle
and worthless schoolboy.

For Bulgaria had a real ruler, in spite of the
kidnapping of its first prince and the appointment
of a half-pay lieutenant to take his place. He
was a little, fat, dirty man, the son of an innkeeper
named Stambuloff. One can measure Bulgarian
character by the stamp of the greatest man
Bulgaria has yet produced. Stambuloff, the
patriot statesman, was not ashamed to admit
that he made Sofia the Bulgarian capital, because
he owned large holdings of land there, and could
reap a fortune from the circumstance.

And before his coronation as Prince of Bulgaria
Ferdinand had a sufficing taste of the mastery
of this overlord who ruled his new subjects with
a rod of iron. The Prince had designed his own
coronation robe, a tasteful garment in purple
and ermine that became him marvellously.

LEARNING THE EOPES 41

Nicely scented, and jewelled in admirable taste,
he encountered his Prime Minister, who was
smoking a black cigar that smelt like the burning
of old boots — what the Americans call a cooking
cigar — and displayed a liberal portion of Bulgarian
soil under his long finger-nails.

Stambuloff looked him over with a loud snort.
" I cannot, and will not, be seen with you, if
you don't take that rubbish off," he shouted ;
and then as a malicious afterthought added :
" Why not spend the money on a trusty body-
guard ? " And the ruffian laughed aloud as
Ferdinand went livid in his gorgeous purple and
ermine robe. For it was an open secret that
Bulgaria held no terror for Ferdinand to compare
with his fear of assassination.

But even the fear of assassination could not
scare him off his uneasy throne. " Mon Dieu ! "
said he. " As they leave me here I will remain.
The position is not particularly brilliant, but
where is a better one to be found ? I am a
reigning prince. I have a pretty good civil list,
and rather pleasant shooting. I might as well
be here as anywhere else." There, you see, is
the real Ferdinand, with his habitual cant phrases
laid aside for once.

And he soon found an occupation that pleased
him infinitely, and filled in the gaps of his time
very pleasantly while he was making acquain-

42 FEEDINAND OP BULGAEIA

tance with the language and customs of Bulgaria.
He occupied himself with the organization of
such a secret police service as has disgraced no
other country in the nineteenth century. The
ranks of this precious service were recruited from
handy foreigners who had established themselves
in Bulgaria for some time. In that service pro-
motion was rapid — ^provided that the agent was
a good and trustworthy assassin.

He paid these worthies out of his own pocket,
and their work was the constant espionage on
all the leading men of Bulgaria. Thus he got
acquainted with all the peccadilloes of the men
who governed the country for him, while they
despised the scented dandy who came among
them with such show of royal state.

Where real misbehaviour could not be dis-
covered, imaginary offences were invented in
plenty, and Ferdinand soon had evidence against
every man of any importance in his realm. How
he made use of these secret dossiers can well be
imagined. Those most guilty were made his
tools by threats of exposure and punishment, and
he gathered around him the support of the worst
blackguards in Bulgaria.

This work provided congenial employment for
the young Prince, who had been nurtured on the
morals of Machiavelli and the traditions of
Talleyrand. His spies made Sofia the most

LEAENING THE EOPES 43

uncomfortable city for the stranger that Europe
possessed, but the habitues of the place paid
little heed to his army of Mouchards. For even
before the coming oi Ferdinand, the customs of
the Bulgarian capital were nothing very nice.

And thus Ferdinand learned the language of
his subjects, and added his own little improve-
ments to their customs and traditions. But
there was something that worried him beyond
the boundaries of his principality, and as it
worried his devoted mother even more, it soon
began to occupy the whole of his attention.

For the Powers of Europe would not recognize
his appointment as Prince of Bulgaria.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

" What ! My nephew Ferdinand / But it is so long since
I have seen you that,\Uke the Powers, I did not recognize
you." — Due d'Aumale.

CHAPTEE IV
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

WHEN Ferdinand was elected Prince of
Bulgaria by the Sobranje, and signed the
Constitution, no one of the Powers of Europe
recognized his sovereignty. On the other hand,
the Sultan of Turkey declared his position illegal
within a week of his signing the Constitution,
and none of his Eoyal relatives and supposed
backers disputed the attitude of the Turk.

Now to be King in one's own country, even if
outsiders do not recognize the kingship, is at
least a position of importance. And, more
common still, to be recognized as king by the
whole world when the kingship is bounded by
the mere title is at least honorific. But Ferdinand,
having accepted a position as reigning Prince,
was not recognized as Prince outside his own
realm, and had only those attributes of Boyalty
in Bulgaria which he chose to assume for himself.

47

48 FEEDINAND OF BULGAKIA

The real ruling was done by a fat, cross man,
who treated him with open contempt.

The position was an intolerable one for Ferdi-
nand, and for his proud mother as well. Together
they plotted how they might end it, and for
years left no stone unturned to obtain recognition
from the Powers of Europe. They knew the
way quite well ; it was only necessary that one
Great Power should recognize his position, and
the rest would follow as a matter of course.

Behold our Ferdinand, then, flitting from
Court to Court of Europe in search of a friendly
lead.

Austria seemed to him and his mother the
most likely place, but the Emperor Francis
Joseph proved a stiffer obstacle than they had
reckoned for. When he was earnestly approached
on the subject, the Emperor gave an uncom-
promising refusal couched in the most compro-
mising terms. " Besides being an Emperor, I
am also an honest man ; and I deal only with
honest men."

Then he swung to the other extreme of the
pendulum, and paid his court to Eussia. The
result of this manoeuvre was a blunt intimation
that he must not even seek a pretext for paying
a visit to Petrograd. There were many reasons
why Eussia should desire to keep him among the
outsiders, and the religious one was among the

THE IMAN WHO WOULD BE KING 49

most obvious. Ferdinand was a superstitious, if
not a devout, Eoman Catholic, ruling a people
whose official religion was the Orthodox Church.
He had been refused allegiance by the head of
the Bulgarian Church, the Patriarch Clement,
who had sujffered imprisonment in consequence.

With a sigh, mother and son admitted there
was small hope at present of Eussia.

Then they turned hopeful eyes on England.
He had a sentimental claim upon Queen Victoria,
as a Coburg Prince who was born in the very
year in which the Prince Consort died. Be sure,
this little sentimental memory was kept alive by
the astute Princess Clementine. As a small
boy, he wrote childish letters in the best English
he could muster, and at frequent intervals.
As a man, he employed to her his best bedside
manner, which few old ladies could resist, and
which impressed her so strongly that at his
wedding she described him as an " enjoleur " —
a beguiler. Wherefore he has since borne the
nickname of the " Fat Charmer."

But he got very little out of shrewd Queen
Victoria, except a present of a pug dog, of which
he made a great fuss. He had it fattened beyond
even the stoutness and wheeziness of the ordinary
pug, and declared that it was his mascot. When-
ever he entertained English notabilities, he made
a point of speaking with affectionate reverence

D

50 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

of " Her Most Gracious," as he used to call her.
And, as he pronounced the words, a tender
moisture obscured his light blue eyes, and just
enough huskiness gave them a reverential flavour
that was most impressive.

His worldly mother entertained greater hopes
of King Edward, then Prince of Wales. The
pair used to lay in wait for him at Marienbad,
where our late King regarded them in the same
light as the mineral water — unpleasant, but part
of the cure. He entertained them and was
entertained, but those who knew him most inti-
mately could not master their smiles when any
significance was attached to this complaisance.
Tactful and wise as he ever was, our King Edward
gave no offence, but raised no hopes.

He even went to Constantinople, where he had
to wear a red fez as a symbol of the Sultan's
overlordship.

Paris, too, saw a great deal of him through
these years of seeking recognition. Each year
he spent some time in the French capital, be-
having in an effusive manner, that on one occasion
nearly involved him in a sound kicking. His
mother still had great influence in the city of
her birth, but it was the wrong kind of influence
for Ferdinand. He was more admired than liked
by the French, who were the first to appreciate
the real nature of his character.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING 51

It was in Paris that lie incurred the snub that
made him vow that he would never set foot in
the city again ; and part of the bitterness was
contained in the fact that the snub was admin-
istered by his own uncle, the Due d'Aumale. He
had left the opera, and betook himself to a very
exclusive caf6 for some of those good things of
life which he knows well how to appreciate.
Amid the brilliant company assembled, he noticed
the Due d'Aumale, whom he approached famili-
arly, holding out his hand with easy confidence.

The old nobleman looked at him curiously, as
at a stranger whom he had never before seen.

" What, uncle, don't you know me ? " he
cried. " It is I, your nephew Ferdinand."

" What ! My nephew Ferdinand ! But it is
so long since I have seen you that, like the Powers,
I did not recognize you."

So Ferdinand wandered from one Court to
another, seeking the friendly lead, and meeting
with nothing but much sly laughter. At home
in Bulgaria he knew better than to expect any
sympathy. His strong man Stambuloff was intent
in holding off Eussia on one side and Turkey
on the other, with a watchful eye between whiles
on Austria. He did not care whether the Prince
of Bulgaria were recognized or not, so long as
Bulgaria itself remained intact and progressive.

Sometimes he interfered with Ferdinand'9

62 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

schemes when they seemed to him to endanger
his own. For instance, Ferdinand, on some
pretext or other of state, sought to impose him-
self on the Court at Petrograd at a time most
inconvenient for Stambuloff. The innkeeper's
son warned the Coburg Prince most promptly
that if he crossed the frontier outwards he would
most certainly not be allowed to cross it on the
return journey. So Ferdinand stayed in Sofia.

Then Clementine had an inspiration ; Fer-
dinand, now a bachelor in the thirties, must
marry. A good marriage would give him strong
enough influence in some particular direction to
force the recognition which was now her whole
reason for continuing to exist.

Whereupon the Fat Charmer set out on a new
pilgrimage. Ferdinand in search of a wife.

THE COMPLEAT BACHELOR

" Ferdinand is like the traditional British sailor : he has a
wife in every one of his ports of refuge.^^ — Stambuloff.

CHAPTER V

THE COMPLEAT BACHELOR

THE young Prince Ferdinand had received
almost daily lessons from his mother on
the part that women were apt to play in his
life. She, the Princess Clementine, his own
mother, shrank from no sacrifice when advancing
his pursuit of some vacant throne. She held no
claim to consideration as compared to the great
life object she set before him and herself. And
she was determined that no woman breathing
should live to become a hindrance to the quest.
Imagine, then, what teaching Ferdinand re-
ceived, when still an innocent child, about women
from the lips of one of the cleverest women that
ever lived. No illusions for him, no charming
boyish enthusiasm for angels of earth. He had
it drilled into him at every hour of the day that
for the benefit of great princes like him all women
existed — yes, even his own mother. Women
were to be courted, wheedled, used, seduced;

a

56 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

but not honoured. No tender feeling was ever
to enter his mind in connexion with a woman,
for that way led to the path of self-sacrifice.
And Ferdinand must sacrifice others, never
himself.

The weaker side of feminine character was
exposed to him by many an object lesson, for
the young Ferdinand was brought up in an
atmosphere almost essentially feminine. At
sixteen he was more cynical about the sex than
many a roue of sixty. The doctrine of woman's
eternal pursuit of the male had been so drummed
into his ears that he regarded everything in
petticoats as a prospective burden upon himself.
He told himself everlastingly that he must allow
no tender feeling for any woman to occupy his
mind, else he would be saddled with a burden
for life.

He went from capital to capital with his
mother, glancing appraisingly at women of
every degree in life, and having his premature
adventures with the precautions and blas^ in-
difference of a tired man of the world. He
formed a style of conversation for feminine
company, in which a brilliant form of double
meaning predominated. He wielded his weapon
so skilfully that a pure woman, even an under-
standing one, had no defence against it. The
other kind were dazzled by the proficiency of

At the age of 22.

At the Coronation of Czar
Alexander III.

At the time of his election At the opening of the first
as Prince of Bulgaria. Sobranje.

[To face page 57.

THE COMPLEAT BACHELOE 57

this mere youth in innuendo of the vilest kind,
wrapped up so skilfully that even the most alert
mind hesitated before its ambiguities.

He shocked, but he also captivated ; and he
was fii'm in never himself becoming a captive.
He soon earned the reputation he sought, he
was credited with being as fickle as he was suc-
cessful in love affairs. He left behind him in
the capitals of Europe a trail of broken hearts
and broken promises ; and his mother approved
the firmness of his procedure. She never had to
accuse him of one generous impulse, where women
were concerned. In this matter he was her
devoted pupil.

So he came to the throne of Bulgaria with no
encumbrances at all ; no favourite to offend the
ladies of the Bulgarian Court, no dancer in a
gorgeous villa very near the Palace. The r61e
of a bachelor Prince suited him admirably, and
he settled down at Sofia and Varna in that
capacity.

Of course, there were scandals. The Prince
wished above all things to become possessed of
the secrets of the most powerful of his subjects.
What better way of worming them out than by
means of a love affair with a wife here or a sister
there ? It was so easy afterwards, when the
required information had been gained, to explain
that his passion had been simulated and that

58 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

the lady had deceived herself. Then affairs of
State would call Ferdinand to Paris or Carlsbad,
where there was fresh wooing to be done. In
the meantime the little affair at Sofia had time
to blow over.

But chickens have a habit of coming home to
roost, even in the palaces of princes. The very
real indifference which Ferdinand displayed to
all women when his end had been won was well
calculated to arouse the deepest sentiment in
the minds of some of the sex. He had more
difficulty in shaking off some of his conquests
than he had ever expected, and remote as the
city of Sofia is, and undesirable to women of
the gay world, he could not escape the attentions
of his infatuated cast-offs even there.

In some cases the result was expensive to a
Prince who inculcated generosity in others by
refusing any display of it on his own part. In
at least one instance, an adventure begun lightly
enough by him ended in a tragedy which cast a
shadow on the throne itself. Ferdinand owns
large estates in Hungary, where he loves to go
for hunting expeditions, under the title of Count
Murany, a favourite alias of his. In Budapest
he encountered and wooed Anne Simon, one of
the most beautiful actresses of her day, and a
great favourite in the Hungarian capital.

Ferdinand ended the adventure after his

IHB COMPLEAT BACHELOE 59

approved style, leaving the lady with a jeer at
her credulity, and a compliment at the high
art of her tragic acting. The passionate gipsy
woman pursued him to Sofia, and refused to be
shaken off. Soon her claim upon the bachelor
prince, and the open eagerness with which she
pressed it, became the scandal of Sofia.

The task of getting rid of her he confided to
his aide-de-camp. Captain Boitscheff , who bungled
the business sorely. Anne Simon raised such
violent objection and resistance to the peaceful
abduction which the aide-de-camp had planned
that he lost his temper. Next day the dead
body of the actress was found in a mean street
of Sofia, disfigured by knife wounds.

Anne Simon had many friends, including some
at the Austrian Court, and Ferdinand's pursuit of
her had been a matter of notoriety in Hungary.
Sofia, then as now, teemed with Austrian Secret
Service men, and the whole story was known to
the Emperor within three days of the tragedy.
Francis characterized Ferdinand as a felon, with
whom no decent person could associate. He
went further, and demanded the arrest and trial
of the captain.

The latter took refuge in the palace itself,
and was dragged to prison from the very table
of his princely patron. The trial was a stern
one, and as the evidence was indisputable he

60 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

was sentenced to death. The sentence was
commuted by Ferdinand to imprisonment for
life, and that sentence the aide-de-camp is still
nominally serving. But he entertains his friends
at elaborate luncheon parties, and may be seen
in the box of the theatre or in any gay resort
of Sofia that may happen to attract him. His
name has not been removed from the Bulgarian
army list, and every one knows that his sentence
of imprisonment is a long-played farce.

So for eight years, Ferdinand played the con-
genial r61e of the bachelor Prince. His character
was well known to his own subjects, though he
contrived to prevent the worst of the stories
against him from general circulation in Europe.
The methods he employed were cynically
effective. A prominent gutter journalist of his
capital accused him in print of sins unmentionable
here, and compared to which the conduct I have
sketched is mere youthful indulgence. Ferdinand
put him on the pension list and closed his mouth
forever.

His predecessor. Prince Alexander of Batten-
berg, had married an actress, and as long as he
lived, Ferdinand had nothing to fear from rival
aspirants to his throne. But the time came when
that unhappy Prince paid the debt of his bravery
and his rash virtues ; and the death of Alexander
pointed attention to the fact that there was no

THE COMPLEAT BACHELOR 61

heir to the throne on which Ferdinand was now
firmly seated.

Clementine said it was time that he married,
and, like a dutiful son, Ferdinand set off with
her in search of a princess. All the humiliations
he had previously endured were as nothing com-
pared to the slights heaped upon the Fat Charmer
in search of a wife.

THE BROKEN-HEARTED PRINCESS

" // any woman ever died of a broken heart, it was the
Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria" — " Svoboda."

CHAPTEE VI
THE BROKEN-HEARTED PRINCESS

WE have seen Ferdinand waiting for a
Crown to turn up. We have seen him
striving vainly for a friendly lead to recognition
as a Sovereign Prince by the Powers of Europe.
Now this Micawber among Monarchs is revealed
as waiting anxiously and servilely for a suitable
bride to appear. And in the search for a wife he
endured the most poignant humiliations that
have overtaken even him in a long life spent in
eating dirt.

Ambitious Clementine wished him to espouse
a princess who would not only furnish an heir
to the throne, but would bring influence to his
palace, and help materially in the long quest
for recognition. But the princesses of Europe,
and the advisers who guided their choice of a
consort, looked with disdain upon the princely
parvenu. Queen Victoria, who was amused at
his flattering speech and grand airs, drew the

65 ■

M FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

line at an alliance with a prince whoso tenure of
the throne was so doubtful as that of Ferdi-
nand's.

That he may have expected ; but the conduct
of the smaller kingdoms filled him with surprise
and resentment. He might not aspire any-
where, and the fact was conveyed to him in a
fashion so unmistakable that he was at the
utmost pains to conceal his deep chagrin.

Finally a match was made for him by his
mother. The victim was a dear little meek
soul, a devout Catholic, and one of the gentlest
spirits of her time — Princess Marie Louise of
Parma, a niece of the Comte de Chambord. She
was remarkably beautiful in a tiny way, with
reddish-brown hair, large blue eyes, and a simple
dignity that won all hearts.

The wedding took place at Lianore, in Lucca,
and old Stambuloff paid the Princess the rare
compliment of leaving his close watch on the
affairs of Bulgaria long enough to attend the
wedding. He was charmed with the sweet,
pleasant girl of twenty-three, and in a message to
her father declared " Bulgaria will honour and
watch over her." As far as he could, he kept
the promise he made on that occasion.

Stambuloff was just as anxious to see Ferdinand
wedded as was Clementine. " We want a
dynasty," he urged on Ferdinand, " and our

rrincess Marie Louise of Bulgaria.

[To face page 66.

THE BROKEN-HEARTED PRINCESS 67

enemies want you to remain a bachelor. As long
as you are unmarried you are in danger of assass-
ination, and we are in danger of anarchy. When
you are once married and possessed of a son and
heir, they will not try to kill you. But even if
you are assassinated, it won't matter to us then."
It was frankness of this kind which endeared his
Premier to Ferdinand.

The Sultan Abdul had the grace to telegraph
congratulations to Ferdinand on the occasion of
his marriage. " You have strengthened the
Bulgarian Principality," he declared, with other
courteous phrases, all of which Ferdinand read
as a reminder of his state of vassalage.

The Duke of Parma made one condition of
importance when giving his consent to the wed-
ding. He insisted that the children of the marri-
age should be baptized into the Catholic Church,
and should be brought up in that faith.
Ferdinand himself was a Catholic, if he was
anything at all, and the condition was therefore
the more reasonable. But the official religion of
Bulgaria is, of course, the Orthodox Church, and
the masses are bigoted in their adherence to
that faith.

The real difficulty lay in an article of the
Bulgarian Constitution that provided that the
heir to the throne must be baptized according
to the rites of the Orthodox Church. This

68 FBEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

difficulty was met by Stambuloff in his own
downright fashion. He annulled it, to the horror
of the Bulgarian Churchmen, and made the
marriage possible.

The Princess won the hearts of her new sub-
jects from the very moment of her arrival in
Bulgaria. She had the sympathetic notion to
enter the Principality attired in the costume of
an ordinary Bulgarian woman, and it became
her girlish beauty charmingly. Her frank unaf-
fected interest in all she saw, her gracious accept-
ance of the little gifts, and the somewhat boorish
homage paid her on her journey, gave her a
reputation that preceded her to Sofia. She
retained the instant popularity she won till the
day of her death six years later. She was as
much loved in Bulgaria as Ferdinand was
detested.

The treatment accorded her by her husband,
almost from the day of her wedding, was well
calculated to shrivel such a gentle soul, and to
extinguish the spark of life in so frail a frame.
The absurd formality of his Court imposed upon
her tasks that wearied her almost to uncon-
sciousness. She had nothing in common with
her crafty, ambitious husband, who had taken
her into a nightmare land where assassination
and worse horrors lurked perpetually in the dark
corners of the magnificent palaces she occupied.

THE BEOKEN-HEAETED PEINCESS 69

Four children she bore him in six years. Once
she left him, as a [protest against the shame-
less breach of the conditions under which she
consented to wed him. During that period of
separation her friends and relatives made public
details of the torture of her married life that
left Ferdinand's callous nature exposed to the
full gaze of the world.

It was told how, in order to punish one of her
favourite Court ladies for some indiscretion of
speech, Ferdinand rose to his feet, and remained
standing for over an hour. This imposed a
standing posture upon the whole of the Court,
including the Princess, who had but lately become
a mother. The whole Court looked on in horror
as this fragile flower grew whiter and whiter in
her robes of State, maintaining herself in an
upright position with the acme of physical effort.

Unheeding her sufferings, Ferdinand held grimly
on, and when she finally fell fainting into the
arms of one of her ladies, watched her removal
from the chamber with unmoved grimness. That
is only one among thousands of instances of
refined cruelty alleged against him and credited
by his subjects. Little wonder that as he drove
through the streets of Sofia the people turned
away their faces, unwilling even to look upon so
mean-spirited a domestic tyrant.

I shall presently give the details of the bias-

70 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

phemous breach, of faith that caused her to
leave him, and nearly brought about his excom-
munication at the hands of the Pope. In the
end she was persuaded to return to him, but she
did not long survive the reunion. She never
rose after the death-birth of her fourth child,
the Princess Nadejda, and terminated her unhappy-
life at the age of thirty.

The real cause of her death was the blow
inflicted upon her gentle piety when Ferdinand
caused the infant Prince Boris, the heir to the
throne, to forswear the faith of his ancestors
on both sides at an age when the very meaning
of the ceremony was hidden from the child. It
was a step which Ferdinand had not even dared
to take in his own person. Advantageous as
adherence to the Orthodox Church could be to
him, his superstitious fears prevented him from
the blasphemy he imposed upon a child of three.
Let us examine his reasons and excuses for the
crime which broke the heart of the unhappy
Princess Marie Louise of Parma.

AN APOSTATE BY PROXY

*^ It is my duty to lay on the altar of the Fatherland the
greatest and heaviest of sacrifices." — Ferdinand of Bul-

GABIA.

CHAPTEE VII
AN APOSTATE BY PROXY

BOEIS TIE:N^0VSKI, heir to the throne of
Bulgaria, was christened in the Eoman
Catholic faith, according to the terms of the
wedding contract, which had necessitated an
amendment of the Bulgarian Constitution. But
the ceremony gave a fresh offence to Eussia,
the nation which is champion of the Orthodox
Church, and which was at that time the Power
from which Ferdinand had most to hope.

Even when this christening took place he had
in his mind an act which would be even a more
effective conciliation to Eussia than the original
christening of his heir in the Orthodox faith
would have been. He determined to make the
child renounce the faith of his fathers, and
embrace the oflflcial religion of Bulgaria.

The way to this apostasy was smoothed by a
mission to Petrograd, undertaken by the ex-

73

74 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Metropolitan Clement, whom Stambuloff put in
gaol for refusing allegiance to Ferdinand. That
Catholic Prince gave the rebellious prelate strong
encouragement in his mission, and received him
on his return with the honours usually accorded
to a victorious general. Then followed the
important step of re- amending the Consti-
tution.

In a letter to the Czar Ferdinand announced
his intention of re-baptizing little Boris in the
Orthodox faith, and the Czar, having negotiated
the matter through Clement, graciously consented
to be the godfather of the infant apostate. " For
the Czar's condescension the Prince will submit
to any humiliation," said Stambuloff once, and
this event proved how rightly he had estimated
the Prince whom he had created.

In a proclamation to the Bulgarian people,
that is terrible in its terms of slavery, he an-
nounced that the Czar had not only graciously
consented to become the godfather to the heir,
but that he had " manifested his goodwill to
our nation by renewing with it the political
relations that had been interrupted." Then
he organized a great national raree-show at
Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, where
the re-christening took place on February 26.

Tirnovo was crowded with Eussians of all
degrees for the occasion, and for their benefit

AN APOSTATE BY PEOXY 75

were organized the throngs of Bulgarian peasants
in national costume who paraded the streets
singing the old Bulgarian folk-songs, and display-
ing the entwined banners of the two countries.
These good folk danced the old Bulgarian dances,
which they had just learned with an immensity
of labour, in the market-place of the ancient
city, and then sang the Eussian National Anthem
in conjunction with their own.

The ceremony in Tirnovo Cathedral was a
pitiful business. The poor little heir to the
throne, not yet three years of age, was torn from
the arms of his mother, who protested with all
the force of which her character was capable,
and dressed all in white for the baptism. He
stood all alone at the altar, a pathetic, uncom-
prehending little figure, and was made to renounce
the faith in which he had been christened.

So Ferdinand committed apostasy by proxy.
The oflQcial representative of the Czar-godfather,
who was accorded royal honours in Tirnovo that
day, afterwards described the ceremony as "a
blasphemous mockery and an exhibition of
political legerdemain." But Ferdinand cared
little for what was said of him. The Sobranje
voted to the heir to the throne a sum of £20,000,
and the old accusation that he was leading the
nation from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was for
ever stilled.

76 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Having appeased Eussia and confirmed the
ancient religion of Ms subjects in the person of
the heir to the throne, Ferdinand was to reap
the benefit of his perjury by receiving the long-
awaited recognition of his sovereign Lord Abdul
the Damned. The Eed Sultan issued a firman,
recognizing him as Prince of Bulgaria, with the
title of Eoyal Highness, and as Governor-General
of Eastern Eumelia.

Meantime the young mother had fled, taking
her second son with her. She made her way,
almost dead with grief, to her ancestral home,
where she claimed the protection of her father.
Enraged by Ferdinand's open violation of the
wedding contract, the Duke of Parma espoused
her cause with all the vigour of which he was
capable, and received the full support of the
Church.

Ferdinand was most anxious to end the scandal,
and to coax the Princess back to Sofia. With
that end in view he obeyed a summons issued
by Pope Leo XIII, which, as a good Catholic,
he would have had some difficulty in ignoring.
Strong in the virtue of his princely rank, and in
the dignity of a recent interview with the Sultan
of Turkey, a Pagan potentate, in which Ferdinand
sported the red fez of vassaldom, Ferdinand made
his way to Eome with a quiet confidence in his
own rectitude and his mother's influence.

AN APOSTATE BY PEOXY 77

He entered the Vatican for his interview with
every appearance of smirking self-satisfaction.
The interview was but a short one ; it lasted
only a few minutes, but much can happen in a
few minutes. No other man was present, and
there is no record of what took place at the
meeting.

But when Ferdinand sneaked out of the
presence, abashed and humiliated, and fled from
Eome with no word ; when months passed
before he entirely recovered the jauntiness of
his demeanour, it needs no great quality of
imagination to guess that he received a notable
rebuke. For some years he endured the stern
displeasure of Eome, and the ban, almost amount-
ing to excommunication was only lifted many
years later at the strongly expressed wish of the
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian
throne, whose assassination was the signal for
the great world conflict in which we are still
engaged.

The Princess never recovered from that blow.
In course of time she was induced to return to
her husband, bringing with her the child Cyril.
But now she was a drooping flower, with no
hope of ever reviving. She walked through the
weary round of her Court duties, and bore two
daughters to the father who had made of his
son and heir an apostate. She only lived one

78 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

day after the birth of the second girl, when this
gentle woman died of her wrongs.

But Ferdinand was satisfied. He had made
his peace with Eussia, and the Eed Sultan called
him Eoyal Highness. He was now on the side
of the clerical plotters of his kingdom, and wore
the hall-mark of Bulgarian ecclesiasticism. He
even talked of giving his own open adherence to
the Orthodox Church, though this has never
been done.

In the meantime he had provided an Orthodox
heir to the throne, and by the act had mitigated
the dread of assassination that had for so long
hag-ridden him. For assassination was ever the
terror that haunted Ferdinand's mind. He lived
for ever with the dread spectre at his elbow, and
he had reason for his dread. For, as we shall
now see, assassination was a familiar political
weapon in Bulgaria before the arrival of Ferdi-
nand, who can claim credit for remarkable
improvements upon the crude methods in vogue
before his era of subsidized slaughter.

THE BUTCHERED "BISMARCK

j>

" Ij any ordinary citizen of any State had been so incrimin-
ated as Prince Ferdinand has been, the man would have been
arrested." — " Vossische Zeitung."

CHAPTEE VIII
THE BUTCHERED "BISMARCK"

THE outstanding instance of Ferdinand's
intimacy with the grosser forms of assas-
sination is the murder of Stepan Stambuloff,
" the Bismarck of the Balkans." This gross
little being was a forceful, sturdy, fat man, who
sprung from an innkeeper of Tirnovo ; whence
Ferdinand's favourite name for him — the Tapster.
He had been trained to the Bar, and was the
foremost advocate of his day in Sofia.

He was almost the foremost conspirator as
well, and played a prominent part in the series
of rebellions against the Turkish rule which
eventually resulted in the creation by Eussia of
the Principality of Bulgaria, and in the election
of Alexander of Battenberg to the throne. His
imagination was caught by the dream of the
Greater Bulgaria created by the Treaty of San

81 F

82 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

Stefano, and abrogated by the Berlin Conference
before it had been actually called into being.

Stambuloff was a typical Bulgarian, coarse,
vulgar, violent, and crafty. But he was a
patriotic Bulgarian as well ; and in his alert
mind the danger arising from a benevolent
Russia was more acute than that arising from a
hostile Turkey. He it was who called Ferdinand
to the throne to hold at bay the Russian influence ;
and to his Bulgarian mind the disfavour in
which Ferdinand's acceptance of the throne had
landed him was one of his chief qualifications.

The first meeting of the pair took place upon
a little steamer on which Ferdinand was steal-
ing into his new principality by way of the
river Danube. They discovered differences at
their very first encounter, but the differences
were then more important to the Prince than
to the statesman. Ferdinand was loth to take
Stambuloff into his counsels, and endeavoured
to place Stoiloff, who was a member of the
deputation which had selected him for Bulgaria,
in the position of Prime Minister. But all
attempts to form a Ministry were unavailing, and
Ferdinand was forced to send for Stambuloff,
and for the next six years the Tapster reigned
supreme in Bulgaria.

The relations between the two, strained on
their first meeting, went steadily from bad to

THE BUTCHERED " BISMAECK " 83

worse as time wore on. Stambuloff was far
from impressed by the statecraft whicli his
Prince had imbibed at his mother's knee, and
treated him from the first as a silly schoolboy,
Ferdinand's love of ceremony and state was
marked out by him for the most contemptuous
treatment ; he loved to make the state with
which the Prince surrounded himself appear
ridiculous and mean.

Ferdinand's concern about recognition by the
Powers was a mere nothing to Stambuloff ; it
provided a means for playing Eussian intrigue
off against Turkish hostility, and therefore
Stambuloff welcomed it. In a word, he was for
Bulgaria, while Ferdinand was only concerned
with the interests and the prestige of the Prince
of the Bulgarians.

While Ferdinand was settling down in Sofia,
and learning the language and corrupting the
politicians through his band of spies, he endured
the arrogance and authority of Stambuloff pati-
ently enough. But after four years of this he
began to strive for some way of ridding himself
of his too-powerful Minister. Then began a
series of attempts upon the life of Stambuloff,
which he evaded by coincidences that were
remarkable in their effectiveness.

For instance, in 1891, he was walking home
from his club with his friend and colleague.

84 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

M. Beltcheff, and passed three men at a well-lit
corner. Shortly afterwards he changed to the
other side of his friend, and they had not walked
a score of yards in this order when Beltcheff fell
pierced by the bullets of assassins. As Stambuloff
ran for the nearest guardhouse, a cry of " Stambu-
loff is dead " fell on his ears, convincing him
that the bullets were intended for him. The
murderers remain unpunished to this day. In
the next year, the Bulgarian agent. Dr. Viilko-
vich, was stabbed in the street, in circumstances
which point to another mistake by the assassins
of the Prince. Once more the murderers, who
were well known, contrived to escape punish-
ment.

But men who offended Ferdinand at this time
had a way of falling into trouble with mysterious
assassins. The case of Dr. Takeff is much in
point. Takeff was a journalist who had com-
mented in offensive terms, even for Sofia, upon
the extravagance of the Court. Shortly after-
wards he was riding near Sofia with the poet
Aleko Constantinoff, and the pair changed seats.
Again the assassins found the wrong man by
reason of this accident, and poor Constantinoff
suffered for the writings of his friend. But, as
the official Press of Sofia remarked, his death
was due to his keeping bad company, and his
murderers were never punished.

THE BUTCHEEED " BISMAECK " 86

The double attempt to kill Stambuloff aroused
popular sympathy with the Minister, who had
become detested because of the rigour with which
he suppressed conspiracies, and because of the
severity of the taxes in which the progressive
policy he instituted involved Bulgaria, and to
which are due the great improvements for which
Ferdinand gets the credit. Experience had^ also
warned Stambuloff, who instituted precautions
which made attempts on his life difficult of
execution. Ferdinand then began to scheme in
order to force his resignation. In this he was
abetted by the pro-Eussian group of politicians
in Sofia, but their schemes fell down before the
imperturbability of the Prime Minister. But a
severe blow was dealt at Stambuloff's influence
when he revised the Constitution to permit the
wedding with Princess Marie Louise to take
place.

He encountered strong opposition, not only
in the Sobranje, where the clerical party was
very strong, but also with his own Ministerial
colleagues. It was the sternest struggle of his
career ; and after winning the fight he declared
to one of his friends that he felt like Jacob felt
after wrestling with God. Thereafter a powerful
political group plotted with the Prince to force
the resignation of Stambuloff.

The head of the most outrageous of the plots

ae PEBDINAND OF BULGABIA

was Major Petroff, against wliom the Premier
obtained incriminating evidence of the most
sensational description. He also obtained proof
that his Prince was implicated deeply in this
plot. The scheme was for the Major, with a
band of firebrands, to rush into the Council
Chamber where the Premier and the Prince
were conferring, and to offer Stambuloff the
choice between instant resignation or instant
death. The discovery of this plot caused Stam-
buloff to write to Ferdinand in the following
terms :

" Your Highness has not learnt in seven years
to know me if you think I can be forced into
signing anything. You might cut off my hands
and feet, but you could never compel me to do
what I now do voluntarily and of my own free
will. Here is my resignation . . . and I warn
you, Sire, that if you treat our new Minister as
you have treated me, your throne is not worth
a louis."

But Ferdinand refused to accept the resig-
nation proffered in these terms, and waited until
a domestic quarrel in which Major Savoff (after-
wards Bulgaria's most celebrated General) was
involved, and caused Stambuloff to publish a
private letter, a line of conduct which the Prince
characterized as " base." This adjective again
drew a resignation from Stambuloff.

THE BUTCHEEED " BISMAECK " 87

Mr. Herbert Vivian, who was in Sofia at the
time, vividly describes the closing scenes between
Premier and Prince. The latter's fete day was
the occasion of a party at the palace : " Stambu-
loff sat in an outer room, glittering with decorations
like a Christmas tree and smoking a big, bad cigar.
After some sulky small-talk he slouched away out
of the palace — a gross breach of etiquette. Some
courtier mentioned this to the Prince ; he shrugged
his shoulders and said : ' I did not know he had
been asked.' "

Two days later, on May 30, 1894, Stambuloff
was summoned to the presence of Ferdinand,
who coldly accepted his resignation. An attempt
to patch up the quarrel ended in a riot outside
the palace gates, in which the rival factions
cried " Down with Stambuloff," and " Down
with Ferdinand." The fallen Minister walked
through the crowd, and was struck and spat
upon as he passed to his home. Arrests were
made, but they were entirely supporters of
Stambuloff, many of whom were not concerned
in the disgraceful scene.

From that day forward Stambuloff was kept
a prisoner in his own house. His property was
sequestrated, and only by the kind offices of
friends was he able to save his fui^niture from
an execution for debt. The assassins of his
friends were allowed to walk the streets of Sofia

88 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

unmolested, but the ex-Premier was refused per-
mission to leave the city.

Time and time again Stambuloff said openly
that Ferdinand meant to have him murdered,
and nobody was so rash as to dispute the truth
of the prophecy. The police agents who were
posted at his house, nominally to protect him,
were in reality his gaolers. In bitter enmity
to Ferdinand Stambuloff gave an interview to
the Frankfort Zeitung, which resulted in his
prosecution for criminal libel against Ferdinand.
The trial dragged on, and efforts were once
more made to get Stambuloff out of Bulgaria.
Medical evidence was forthcoming that his health
demanded the change, and all Bulgarians wished
him to go. But Ferdinand would not permit it.

In July, 1895, the Mir, an ofiBcial newspaper,
published an article stating that it would be a
patriotic deed to tear Stambuloff's flesh from
his bones. Within two days the ex-Premier
was driving home from his club with his friend
Petkoff, when he was attacked by three ruffians
with knives. Petkoff fell to the ground and
could render no assistance ; and the wretches
had Stambuloff at their mercy. With their
knives they hacked his prostrate body until it
lost almost all human semblance.

That night Ferdinand was at the theatre at
Carlsbad, laughing with an unusual gaiety.

THE BUTCHEEED " BISMAECK " 89

He found time to send a hypocritical message
of sympathy to the widow of the dead states-
man, and directed that floral offerings should be
sent to the funeral ; message and flowers were
alike refused. A few days later the Svoboda
(Liberty) openly accused Ferdinand of direct and
full responsibility for the murder of Stambuloff,
an accusation which is supported by such a mass
of evidence as would hang any man, prince or
commoner, in a community such as our own.
But it must be remembered that Ferdinand
loves flowers, is kind to animals, and wept
when he saw the first Bulgarian wounded in
the Balkan War.

THE DEAD HAND

" Wherever you are, in your goings out and your comings
in, the blood of Stambuloff will be with you ; in your home,
among your family, in church and in office, the shadow of
Stambuloff will follow you, and will leave you in the world
never more.'" — " Svoboda."

CHAPTEE IX
THE DEAD HAND

IN a little house in Sofia lives the widow of
Stambuloff, once the most brilliant and
beautiful woman in Sofia, now a withered crone
who continues to live on for a cherished purpose.
Her most treasured possession is the withered
hand of a dead man ; the hand of Stambuloff,
the Bismarck of the Balkans. The woman
and the dead hand wait Christian burial until
the day when vengeance shall have been ex-
acted from his murderer, Ferdinand, Czar of
Bulgaria.

The evidence that fixes the moral guilt for
the murder upon Ferdinand is unassailable. It
was not adduced after the crime, but months
before it took place. In an interview published
at the beginning of 1895, the victim told the
Cologne Gazette from his own mouth the manner
and the very place of his death. For months
beforehand the Svoioda, the Sofiote organ of the

93

94 FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

Stambulovists, had warned the Government
what would take place, and declared that when
it happened the moral guilt would lie upon the
Prince and his Ministers.

On the day after the murder, the paper
accused the Prince of the moral guilt of the
crime in unmistakable words that still ring
through Europe when the death of Stambuloff
is recalled.

" Who are the murderers of Stambuloff ? "
the Svoboda asked. " Who took the life of such
a man as Bulgaria will never see again ? Who
lifted the yataghan against him ?

" They are officially unknown, but all Bul-
garia knows them. For the last seven months
we have repeatedly and openly declared that
the Government was keeping the assassins
of Beltcheff and Vulkovitch to murder Stam-
buloff. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, M.
Natchevitch, has given some of these men posts
under Government, and daily receives them in
his house.

" Whoever struck the blow, the moral mur-
derers are the Prince and his Government, who
refused to allow Stambuloff to leave Sofia, and
so gave an opportunity to their assassins.

*' The blood of Bulgaria's finest patriot cries
aloud for vengeance. Two days ago the official
journal, the Mir^ called upon its friends to tear

THE DEAD HAND 95

the flesh from the bones of M. Stambuloff. Its
orders have been executed."

Stambuloff was murdered in July, 1895. At
the beginning of that year the following remark-
able interview with him was published by the
Cologne Gazette i

" I cannot help thinking that something serious
is in the air. Everything takes time. I hear
from my friends that things have reached a head.
If I must fall, my friends will not desert my wife
and my children. I do not grudge my enemies
that triumph.

" In influential circles care will be taken
that telegrams are sent from all Bulgaria de-
nouncing the murderers, but expressing in the
liveliest terms the satisfaction of * the people '
at being freed for ever from ' the tyrant ' and
* the adulterer.'

" When the attempt on my life — to which
Beltcheff fell a victim — ^was being planned, all
Sofia knew of it. The Chief of Police and his
people remained in blissful ignorance. To-day,
too, numbers of people are aware of the impending
attempt on my life, and my friends — and friends
I have, thank God, everywhere — are more shrewd
than the police.

" I cannot give you names, but my informa-
tion is to be trusted. The former Chief of Police,
Ilija Lukanoff, a man of honour and great ability,

96 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

who is very sincerely devoted to me, and who
has even to-day very extensive connexions with
home circles, came to me yesterday. He was
quite excited, this grave, reserved man.

" He wished to go to the Prince, and acquaint
him with everything. ' Ilija,' I said to him, * it
would be the stupidest thing that you could do.
Don't you see that the murderers have the
strongest support ? '

"We know for an absolute fact that in Nets-
chuinar, a suburb of Sofia, there is a band which
is being drilled in the use of arms. We know
that these people — Beltcheff's murderers are
among them' — have taken an oath to murder
me.

" The gang of which I have been speaking
consists of Eosareff, Hala, Arnaut, Tufekts-
chieff, and some others. Tufektschieff has been
sentenced at Constantinople to fifteen years'
hard labour for the murder of Vulkovitch. Never-
theless he goes about here in safety.

" VelikofE and the other culprits are now at
the head of affairs. Stoiloff is nowhere obeyed.
Why therefore should not the ' tyrant,' the
' vampire,' the ' adulterer ' be assassinated ? "

After the appearance of that interview the
British agent at Sofia made a determined attempt
to obtain from Ferdinand permission for Stam-
buloff to leave Sofia. He was not successful.

THE DEAD HAND 97

All surrounding Ferdinand knew that he laid his
plans to be out of Sofia when the blow should
fall, and that he would send his sympathy, re-
jected by the widow, from Carlsbad.

" If that fox should send a wreath, do not
let it enter the house," moaned Stambuloff on
his bed of agony. They were his dying words.
His right hand, slashed off by his vile butchers,
remains, as I have said, unburied to this day.
For twenty years the Lesser Czar has walked
under the shadow of that dead hand ; has walked
so warily that the horrid death for which his
enemies destine him has not yet overtaken
him.

For Ferdinand had taken his precautions
long ere he had his enemy done to death by
hired braves. He knew he was going to a land
where the knife played an important part in
affairs of State. " In our future dominions,"
wrote the Count de Grenoud, who accompanied
him on this journey in disguise to Bulgaria to
assume the purple, " people are assassinating
each other. I wonder if we shall reach Bulgaria
safe and sound ? "

It was a consideration which affected Fer-
dinand powerfully while on the journey ; so
powerfully that he shook with fright at his first
greeting by his future subjects. But he had
already taken elaboratej [precautions against a

98 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

death with the idea of which he was already
familiar.

His interest in chain armour, displayed when-
ever any fine specimen was brought under his
notice, was not merely the enthusiasm of the
antiquarian. For years he wore a suit of it
under his clothing ; for all I know, he wears
it still. His craft has not so far failed him that
he has become careless of his life.

The apartment at the palace at Sofia which
he calls mon fumoir (my den) has walls of steel
and a door that can be hermetically fastened
by a spring operated from the writing desk. A
series of secret signals, known only to the trusted
men who surround him, ensures that this door
shall only be opened to the men who are safe ;
or, rather, to the men with whom Ferdinand is
safe.

The shadow of the dead pursues him to Euxino-
grad, where the most elaborate precautions are
taken throughout the neighbourhood whenever a
royal visit is in progress. He is a haunted man
even in his hunting quarters at the monastery
of Eilo, where the whole district is policed by
the monks in anticipation of the arrival of the
kingly sportsman.

His travels abroad are marvels of precaution.
Ask the Scotland Yard men, whose duty it is
to look after foreign potentates in this country,

THE DEAD BJlSD 99

who is the fussiest and most timid man they ever
encountered, and an unanimous vote will be cast
for the Czar of Shoddy. In Paris he and his
suite are even more solicitous ; their precautions,
as I have once before related, spoiled the pleasure
of a Grand Prix crowd at Longchamps, when
the Czar of Bulgaria condescended to visit that
former sicene of gaiety and gambling.

In Austria he is little better, and in Germany
he is more fidgetty than ever. But it is when
he has visited Eussia that his precautions become
portentous to the very degree of the ludicrous.
He fancies, this scion of the Bourbons, that the
conspirators will call in the aid of science and
slay him with microbes. The very word disease
makes him blench and fly for safety.

Thus on the journey from Sofia to Petrograd,
in 1909, he was informed that the Grand Duke
Nicholas had been deputed to meet and welcome
him, but would be compelled to see less of him
than he would like, because his nephew was
down with scarlet fever, and although uncle and
nephew were not residing together, the Grand
Duke visited him regularly.

Ferdinand meditated anxiously over this omin-
ous message, and then requested as a great favour
that some other Grand Duke, further removed
from the infectious ills to which even royalties
are subject, should meet him ; whereupon the

100 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Grand Duke Constantine was appointed. Then
the Czar of Bulgaria was tranquillized, and every-
thing went smoothly for a time.

But after a day or two spent in the Eussian
capital Ferdinand was shocked to learn that,
whereas the nephew of the Grand Duke Nicholas
was suffering from scarlet fever in another house,
the Grand Duke Constantine's own children, who
lived with him under the same roof, were suffering
from genuine diphtheria, which everybody knows
is far more malignant.

In the course of the next day Ferdinand was
suffering from an imaginary pain in the throat,
and made such a fuss about it that the whole
Eussian Court was convulsed with merriment.
He sought the first excuse for returning to Sofia,
and only breathed freely when safe again under
the care of his trusted Court physician.

Ferdinand ought to be inured to threats of
assassination, for not a week passes but he gets
threatening letters by the post. But the receipt
of a bottle labelled " typhus bacilli " never fails
to make him livid with fear. The sight of men
cleaning off from the palace walls drawings of
himself suffering hideous deaths — Ferdinand is
easy to draw, and it is a favourite students'
amusement — always sets him chattering with
rage.

But there are traits in his character which

THE DEAD HAOT) 101

overrule this fear of assassination, strong as it
is within him, and cause him to hang on to his
threatened throne, though he does so in fear and
trembling. What those characteristics are will
presently be made plain ; meanwhile, it will be
well to consider what country it is that he rules,
where the leading statesman can predict success-
fully the manner and place of his own assassination
without causing any surprise.

WHO ARE THE BULGARIANS?

" Bulgaria is a country where atrocities are perpetrated."
-"The Times."

CHAPTER X
WHO ARE THE BULGARIANS ?

LESS than a hmndred years ago a small
Eussian army, campaigning against the
Turks between the Balkans and the Danube,
discovered a race of people who spoke a lan-
guage almost identical with their own, and who
possessed Slavonic features and customs. This
discovery was made in a region which for centuries
was believed to be given over to Greeks and Turks.
It came as a shock to the Russians to find that
the supposed extinct race of the Bulgars had
survived through the five hundred years that
separated them from any historical mention.

Then was revived the story of ancient Bulgaria
and its ambitious Czars, who threatened the
Greeks at the very gates of Byzantium a century
before the Turk came to Europe. The newly-
discovered race was descended from the very
desperadoes of the old one ; from the brigands

105

106 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

who had fled to the sternest hills and there pre-
served their racial characteristics from the
onslaught of the proselytizing Ottoman.

Five hundred years had left them just five
hundred years behind in civilization. They
were the same barbarians who had gouged out
their enemies' eyes and hamstrung their own
wives for barrenness when the Turks broke
through the walls of Constantinople. They were
rude, primitive peasants, a dour, disagreeable
race that inhabited the gloomiest portion of
Europe, and had never learned how to smile.

When Bulgaria was one of the great Powers
of central Europe the inhabitants had the custom,
when a child was born, of gathering around the
cradle and moaning in unison. It was their
way of expressing sympathy with the new arrival
for the hard luck of being born into Bulgaria.

The story of their wars with the Byzantine
Greeks is one long record of nameless horrors.
One of the best-remembered incidents is that
of the punishment inflicted upon a captured
host of Bulgars by the Byzantine Emperor, Basil
II. He put out both eyes of all except every
hundredth man, and to him he left one eye, so
that he might lead his blind fellows back to their
defeated Czar.

Time after time the Bulgar Czars organized
the Balkan Slavs into a composite band, with

WHO AEE THE BULGAEIANS ? 107

the object of wresting Byzantium from the
Greeks and fomiding a new Slavonic Empire of
the Orient. Time after time they were checked
in their forward sweep at those very lines of
Chatalja where Ferdinand and his modern Bul-
garians were brought to a standstill by the
stubborn Turk in 1913.

Then came the Turk, and swept aside both
Greek and Bulgar. In the fastnesses of the
stern mountains the scum of the Bulgarian
population hid and multiplied, in time to return
to the tilling of the land. All that had been fine
in the old race had disappeared. It had either
been absorbed by the Turk and his demand for
janissaries and harem women, or it had found its
way to self-extinction in the monasteries with
which the gloomy land was well furnished.

There remained only a race of peasants, without
a history or traditions ; a race over which five
hundred years passed without altering or softening
one feature or one barbarous custom. It was a
race without a nobility or even a landed gentry ;
a race without a literature except a string of
homicidal folk-songs which embody the spirit in
which the Emperor Basil treated the conquered
and captive Bulgars.

The Eussians found them and recognized
them as fellow-Slavs — Slavs with much the
lame original habits and characteristics, but

108 FEBDINAND OF BULGAEIA

with none of the refining influences common
even to the Eussians of the reign of Ivan the
Terrible. It was natural that Russia, with her
hatred of Turkey, should sympathize with this
race, near of kin, but suffering sorely from arrested
development. Thenceforward Bulgaria had an
abettor in her struggle against the domination
of the Turk.

The methods by which the Bulgarians resisted
Turkish tyranny and rapacity were no better
and no worse than their way of striving for a
new Empire of the Orient five hundred years
before. Their conspiracies, their incursions into
non-Bulgarian territory, their skirmishes with the
infidel at their gates, were simply a revival of the
old eye-gouging methods of their mighty Czars
of the Middle Age.

But they had the knack of getting sympathy.
In England, which followed Eussia in her dis-
covery of this race, reputedly extinct, there
was no credit given to the thought that a Bulgarian
could do anything wrong. When the London
newspapers wrote of Bulgarian atrocities, they
meant atrocities committed by Turks in Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian reprisals were known only to the
rare travellers who had penetrated into the heart
of the Balkans, and who, after making close
acquaintance with the habits of the natives,
failed to discriminate between a throat-cutting

WHO AEE THE BULGAEIANS ? 109

executed by a Christian Slav and a similar bit
of work by a heathen Turk.

Very slowly indeed has recognition been forced
of the fact that while the perpetrators of Bulgarian
atrocities were hireling Turks of the lowest class,
and not to be compared with the brave soldiers
who compose the bulk of the Turkish Army,
the Bulgarian comitadjis, with their cowardly
cruelties, were fairly representative of the average
Bulgarian soldier when at war.

What more evidence is required than the
telegram sent by King Constantine from the
field of battle to his Prime Minister, instructing
him to protest against the atrocities of the Bul-
garian soldiery. It is dated July, 1913, and
reads : — " Protest in my name to the represen-
tatives of the civilized Powers against these
monsters in human form, and declare before the
whole civilized world that I shall be compelled
to take vengeance in order to inspire terror into
these monsters, and to make them reflect before
they commit any more such crimes."

Thus Tino the Undecided on his quondam
Allies, who from time immemorial were held
by the Greeks to be barbarians pure and simple.
The taxes of Stambuloff and the sophistication
of Ferdinand may have sufficed to convert
Sofia from a city of sewers and filthy mosques
to a modern capital with electric light and tram-

110 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

ways, gardens, museums and broad boulevards,
but a quarter of a century has not changed the
heart or the outlook of a single Bulgarian peasant.

The whole of Bulgarian literature, until the
last twenty years, was comprised in those folk-
songs which have perpetuated the Bulgarian
spirit and nationality. Chief among them are
the lays of the heroes, and upon these heroes
the character of the Bulgarian peasant of to-day
is modelled. One of these heroes, having been
bantered by his drinking companions on account
of an unnoticed blemish on the fairness of his
lady, goes home and kills her for the fault. An-
other drags his mother round the house by the
hair of the head because he came home unex-
pectedly and found no meal prepared for him.
A third, who had killed his paramour because she
was losing her beauty, was gently chidden by
his mother, who represented that the victim
would have done good work in the scullery.

In short these heroes, whose exploits are sung
in every village of Bulgaria to-day, are as un-
mitigated a lot of cruel scoundrels as ever con-
stituted a comitadji band. Foremost among
them is the national hero Marko, whose extensive
drinking bouts are the only stories that can make
a Bulgarian smile. Among his nobler exploits
are the abduction of a Turkish princess, who
bores him so unutterably that he has her killed

WHO AEE THE BULGAEIANS f 111

by his band. She had contrived his escape from
captivity, and upon this charming legend is
built up the Bulgarian tradition of gratitude.

Such legends are " the gems of our literature,"
says Slaveikoff, the Bulgarian poet. The fact
that for five hundred years they have been the
only Bulgarian literature accounts for the cir-
cumstance that Ferdinand was called to rule over
a race whose ethics were those of the fourteenth
century, and fairly barbarous ones at that.

The land inhabited by this survival of medi-
SBval barbarity is the ancient Scythia, the Siberia
of the Eoman Empire. From time immemorial
it has been the cockpit of Eastern Europe, a
land given over to slaughter and an infinite suc-
cession of dark deeds. It has taken on the
aspect of its history, and the traveller through
its gloomy plains and forbidding mountains can
well sympathize with the culprits of ancient
Eome, who were banished from smiling Italy
to this frowning solitude.

The liberation by Eussia of the Bulgarians from
the Turkish yoke and from Ottoman exactions
gave a stimulus to the primary producing indus-
tries. Land which had never been scratched
since the earliest times was put to the plough,
and proved fertile as the cornland on the borders
of the Black Sea is fertile. The Bulgarians have
improved their long-deferred opportunity, and

112 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

prosperity has followed the act of liberation. It
is a primitive prosperity, and a prosperity upon
which the ambition of Bulgarian rulers has cast
a heavy tax.

At the present time the Bulgarian is emerging
from the peasant stage. The leading men of the
country are the educated sons of peasants, with the
habits of peasants. The traditional simplicity
of their class is a convenience to such men, and
they have made a fetish of it. Among them has
rapidly grown up a military caste, and a bureau-
cratic caste as well. Both have thriven in the
hot-house atmosphere created by Ferdinand, with
his ostentatious Court and his extensive secret
service.

But the soul of Bulgaria is a peasant soul,
brutalized by 500 years of repression and stagna-
tion. The Bulgarians are a race apart, even
among the Balkan peoples. They have a signi-
ficant phrase when they talk of a journey beyond
their own confines ; they say they are going
" into Europe."

FERDINAND AND HIS CREATURES

" When I went to Bulgaria, I decided that if there were to
be assassinations, I should he on the side of the assassins." —
Ferdinand of Bulqabia.

CHAPTEE XI
FERDINAND AND HIS CREATURES

JUST as the Bulgarians say they are going into
Europe when they leave Bulgaria, Ferdinand
decided that he was quitting Europe and civiliza-
tion when he entered his new kingdom. He went
with his mind fixed on thoughts of assassination ;
and turning to account the course of Machiavelli
on which he had been reared, he decided that the
assassins could be made the servant of the Prince.
He has himself confessed that his initial resolve
was to have the assassins on his side.

Between the resignation of Prince Alexander
and the election of Prince Ferdinand, StambulofE
had ruled as dictator, and with the arrival of
Ferdinand the situation was only nominally
altered. Ferdinand was Prince, but StambulofE
ruled the country. To remedying this state
of affairs Ferdinand exercised all his craft,
and his mother, the Princess Clementine, all her
wealth,

US

116 FEEBINAND OF BULGAEIA

The secret police of the couiitry, like all its
other services, were controlled by Stambuloff,
and it became necessary for Ferdinand to organize
a secret service of his own, paid out of his own
pocket. The purpose to which this service was
applied was not to detect crime and conspiracy,
but to gain for Ferdinand information to the
detriment of the principal men around him.

While he was so employed the energies of Stam-
buloff were concentrated in crushing a widespread
conspiracy against Ferdinand, which had been
conceived even before he arrived in Sofia. The
ringleader in this was Major Panitza, an old
friend and fellow- conspirator with Stambuloff
in the days when Bulgaria was not yet a country
with a separate existence. Panitza was a bluff,
jolly fellow, afflicted with the complaint known
to our American cousins as " slack jaw." Conse-
quently he was able to boast about the caf^s of
Sofia that the new Prince would soon be over-
thrown or killed, without much attention being
paid to his talk.

But Stambuloff was alert, and found that
Panitza had really organized a jflot which was
backed by quite half the officers in the Bulgarian
Army, and that risings were arranged in several
important centres at the same time. The method
to be employed with Ferdinand was to seize him,
and offer him the choice between instant resigna-

FEEDINAKD AKD HIS CREATURES 117

tion or sudden death. I^obody doubted which
choice the new Prince would make.

Stambuloff had Panitza arrested by two of the
other ringleaders of the plot, who had to perform
this task in the presence of a band of men loyal
to Stambuloff. A list of officers implicated was
obtained, and precautions were taken that com-
pletely foiled the conspiracy.

That night a dramatic scene was enacted at a
ball given at the Palace, possibly one of the most
surprising entertainments ever offered, even by
a Balkan ruler. Two hundred officers were
bidden, and of these seventy were implicated in
the plot. The Prince knew of their guilt, and
they knew that he knew.

He stood to receive them in his glittering
uniform. On one side of him stood his mother,
a picture of aristocratic, frigid scorn. On the
other stood Stambuloff, his face set in a cynical,
mocking smile. As each of the culprits advanced,
the furious Prince rolled his eyes to his mother,
who gazed at the trembling man with cold, in-
scrutable rage, while the " Tapster " made no
attempt to hide his derisive triumph.

It was a trying evening for the plotters. When-
ever two or three gathered together to discuss
the situation, they became aware of the presence
of mysterious guests at the ball. They were
shadowed and harassed, and knew not what

118 FEBDINANB OF BULGAEIA

miglit be the end of that evening. To their great
relief they were allowed to depart unhindered.

Panitza was tried and sentenced to death.
Kone thought the sentence would be carried out,
Panitza least of all. He relied on his ancient
comradeship with Stambuloff; and besides, it
was recognized on all sides that he was a mere
figurehead in the conspiracy. But Ferdinand in-
sisted, and after his usual fashion rushed off to
Carlsbad before the sentence was carried out.
" He had Panitza shot in order to leave for
Carlsbad the same day," said Stambuloff to the
Cologne Gazette.

Of course, the whole of the odium of this
execution attached itself to Stambuloff. This
enabled Ferdinand to gather round him many
of the men who were spared, and who hated
Stambuloff, both for the death of Panitza, and
for the derision with which he treated them as
unsuccessful plotters. With true Machiavellian
craft, Ferdinand represented to these men that
the whole blame for the severe repressive measures
taken lay with Stambuloff.

Among the dishonest plotting toadies he
attached to his person was the man Natche-
vitch, who goes down in Bulgarian history under
the well-earned designation of Beelzebub. A
bankrupt merchant, he attached himself to
Ferdinand by reason of his lack of scruple and

FEEDINAKD AND HIS CEEATUEES 119

his capacity for eating dirt. He was soon in-
stalled at the Court as one of the chief among
the useful toadies the Prince maintained around
him.

Among his intimates were three brothers named
Tufektschieff, all of whom were implicated in that
attempt to murder Stambuloff, which ended in
the death of his friend Beltcheff. One of them
was arrested, but the other two escaped. The
arrested man was handled by Stambuloff's agents
in such a manner that he died in prison — in plain
English he died under torture rather than betray
his associates. I have said, I think, that the
customs of Bulgaria were those of the Middle
Ages.

Another brother was concerned in the murder
of Dr. Vulkovitch at Constantinople, where he
was sentenced to fifteen years' hard labour for the
crime. He fled back to Sofia and remained in
hiding till the fall of Stambuloff, when he moved
openly about the city under the protection of
Natchevitch, who had now become Minister of
Foreign Affairs. In equal security lived a number
of other men, whose complicity in both these
murders was a matter of notoriety.

Stambuloff, after his quarrel with Ferdinand
and his imprisonment in his own house, gave an
interview to the Frankfurter Zeiiung, in which
the character of Ferdinand was delineated with

120 FEEDINAND OP BULGAEIA

scathing accuracy. When Ferdinand read it
the story of Henry II and Thomas k Becket
rose to his mind. The ready tool Natchevitch
was present, and throwing down the paper he
cried, " Will no one rid me of this "gutter-snipe ? "

Henry, when his sinister order was carried out,
confessed his sin in the sight of the English people
by a penance more remarkable than any made
by a monarch in the pages of history. His bare-
foot pilgrimage to the tomb of the murdered
Archbishop was probably made in genuine sorrow
for a petulant wish, repented before its sugges-
tion had been carried into effect. It is like
Ferdinand to repeat the crime and to omit the
atonement.

The creatures he employed to perpetrate his
crimes remain unpunished to this day. They
were permitted to organize bands to desecrate
the grave of Stambuloff, while yet it was lying
open to receive the mangled body of the states-
man. And Ferdinand, from the safety of Carls-
bad, dared to send expressions of sympathy and
a wreath to the bereaved woman, who had lived
for months in the shadow of the impending crime.

His creatures lived to murder Stambuloff's
friend Petkoff. They lived to wax fat in idleness
in the caf^s of Sofia ; some of them are alive at
this day. Their deeds are known and they make
no concealment of them. For Ferdinand is on

FEEDINAND AND HIS CEEATUEES 121

their side. Well has he kept his wise vow to be
on the side of the assassins.

Not that he would stoop to assassination him-
self. He is always absent in Carlsbad when any
of this vile work is in train. He himself has a
sensitive disposition that revolts at all deeds of
violence and bloodshed. As we shall see, he
cannot even bear to see a dumb animal suffer.

FERDINAND THE FEMININE

" // ever I feel tired or depressed, I have only to look at a
hunch of violets to become myself again." — ^Febdinand of

BULGABIA.

CHAPTEE XII
FERDINAND THE FEMININE

M JOSEPH EEINACH, the French publicist,
. whose articles signed Polybe in the Paris
Figaro have been rightly estimated as among the
most informative contributions to the public
knowledge of European politics, long maintained
a private correspondence with Ferdinand. The
letters of the ruler of Bulgaria, written in his own
handwriting and signed " The Good European,"
are masterpieces of hypocrisy and elaborate
double dealing.

Their tortuous insincerity does not suffice to
conceal one outstanding fact, revealed by the
character of the handwriting itself. The thin,
delicate sloping letters, the rich perfumed note-
paper, the exquisite neatness of the correspon-
dence expose the feminine soul of the man who
has commanded so many murders.

125

126 FEEDINAm) OF BULGAEIA

An admirer has credited him with " an almost
exaggerated delicacy of mind," and the evidence
brought in support of the statement at least
proves that his amusements, his recreations, his
antipathies, and many of his occupations are
those of a well-brought-up woman of the princely
class.

Old Major Popoff, when he met him for the
second time, was received by the Prince reclining
on a gorgeous couch. In his hand was a perfect
Malmaison carnation which he sniffed approvingly;
he even condescended to point out to the rough
old Bulgarian the exquisite formation of the
petals. The visitor was able to grasp two points
in the appearance of his new monarch. His hair
had been elaborately curled and prinked. And
the ruler of Bulgaria wore corsets.

But Ferdinand was too much devoted to the
good things of life to retain the corsets perma-
nently, and they were laid aside as his girth
rapidly increased. As his ambrosial locks receded
from his forehead, he transferred his affections
to his beard, which began existence as a neat
little " imperial " in the early days of his reign.
It has now become a torpedo creation to which a
highly-paid expert devotes the whole of his time,
spending hours in the consideration of its proper
training and nurture.

This beard goes well with his favourite cos-

Ferdinand in his uniform
as Admiral of the Fleet.

Ferdinand in the national
costume of Bulgaria.

[To face page 127.

FEEDINAND THE FEMININE 127

tumes. One of them is the Bulgarian national
costume, which he has elaborated into a creation
of fine linen and silks, with many a feminine
touch in bright colours and delicate trimmings.
The other is that of an admiral of the Bulgarian
Navy, in which he was wont to receive British
visitors of distinction, as being peculiarly suit-
able to the honour of a great Naval Power. Need-
less to say that Ferdinand becomes atrociously
seasick if ever he trusts himself out of sight of
land.

But Ferdinand's talent for designing costumes
is so remarkable that he excited the envy and
admiration of the most celebrated of Parisian
man milliners, who was privileged to witness
him at work with his silks and velvets. This
artist has ever since cherished a malignant wish
that the long-expected reverse might overtake
the Bulgarian Czar, and that cruel fate might
at the same time deprive him of his extensive
inheritance. In that case, real scope might be
found for his remarkable talents, and the women
of the world would be the happier because of a
Bulgarian revolution.

I have already told of the disgust of Stambuloff
at the Prince's coronation creation of purple
velvet and ermine. That is only one of the many
triumphs Ferdinand has achieved with rich stuffs
and anxious thought. He now has a special

128 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

costume of his own design, suitable to every feast
and holy day.

Thus for the Easter feast he prepared a long
mantle of crimson velvet of the order of St.
Alexander, to mark the fact that he was a younger
son. On St. George's Day, April 23, he sports
a robe of blue velvet slashed with silver ; for in
Bulgaria this day is the fdte day of the military
order of bravery, in which Ferdinand takes high
rank.

These creations are the result of many anxious
days spent in his assassin-proof den, surrounded
by his tame birds and the modest wild flowers
from which he draws inspiration. His boyish
hobbies were for flowers and birds, and with the
mature man these tastes have become a veritable
passion. His aviaries are reputed the finest in
the world, and he can still occupy himself with
the woes of a pet canary when all Europe is
bathed in blood, and his rough adopted people
are dying by tens of thousands.

The flower gardens he has installed at his
Palaces of Varna and Euxinograd are veritable
wonders. Trees and plants from every clime
have been acclimatized under the warm sun and
in the virgin soil of rude Bulgaria. In his Japan-
ese garden he has reproduced the ponds and
terraces of the Orient, and by a miracle of care
has bred the butterflies of far Japan in the same

FEEDINAITD THE FEMININE 129

environment, so that they hover among the
Japanese blooms and complete the resem-
blance.

This is only one among the thousand wonders
he has contrived with birds, beasts and insects.
He is at his best when showing these beauties
with unaffected enthusiasm. It is then he tells
his visitors how, when his compeers were deep
in the drill-book and the practice of arms, he
devoted his hours to the study of natural history
and botany, and the cultivation of a sensitive
soul.

Euder monarchs have played coarse jests upon
that sensitive spirit, and have merited a well-
earned and long-treasured resentment. For in-
stance, at a time of great anxiety to Ferdinand,
when the world looked very black, and a kind
word meant so much, he was greatly cheered by
the announcement that his sovereign lord, the
Sultan of Turkey, was sending him a royal present
as a mark of goodwill.

Ferdinand waited anxiously for the present,
but it came not. Instead there came the an-
nouncement that the Bed Sultan was ransacking
his Empire for a steed worthy of such a Prince.
Ferdinand winced, for his horses had to be chosen
with some care. His personal preference was
for the little native ponies of Bulgaria ; when he
was mounted on one of these he had not so far

I

130 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

to fall. Still, a present was a present, and he
waited with eager expectation.

At the end of five weary months, the envoy
from Yildiz was announced. With every show
of pomp he had the present conducted to the
royal mews, where it was received by Ferdinand
in person with all the ceremony which he knew
how to initiate. The wrappings were removed
from the present, and there stood the most
wretched old screw that ever disgraced a Con-
stantinople cab. Casting one glance of fury at
the brute, Ferdinand fled, and next day the
Sultan's present was sent to the Zoo.

Even a more hideous outrage upon Ferdinand's
delicacy of mind was perpetrated by the Kaiser,
who has none of that commodity to spare, and
is given to practical jokes of the kind that Captain
Marryat describes as being usual in the Navy
a century ago. Ferdinand and the Kaiser were
both guests at Brunswick Castle, when the inci-
dent occurred.

The time was spring, and it was a delicious
moonlight evening. In the grounds of the castle
the nightingales were singing voluptuously, and
Ferdinand was wearing for the first time a pair
of white silk smalls which became him to perfec-
tion. He leaned out of the castle window,
surveyed the moonlit beauty, and listened to
the raptures of the bird of spring. All the young

FEEDINAND THE FEMININE 131

girl in him rose to the surface, and he abandoned
himself to the moment and its romance.

And while his shoulders were heaving with
true Coburg emotion and love of nature, there
crept behind him the Kaiser. The broad back
and the roll of fat on the neck were irresistible.
Down came the mailed fist with a resounding
thwack, and with something hardly distinguish-
able from a scream Ferdinand faced his tormentor.

Furious and scarlet with passion he grasped
the identity of his assailant. He summoned to
the occasion all the dignity of the Bourbons. " I
pray Your Majesty to refrain from practical
jokes," he said, and withdrew, refusing to be
conciliated. The pair next met in London at
the funeral of King Edward, but the Bulgarian
monarch refused either to forgive or forget. The
very sight of William caused him to growl like
a sullen bear, though the Kaiser persistently
ignored his resentment.

The twain are now " glorious allies," but the
Kaiser may live to learn that a Bourbon " forgets
nothing."

Of course Ferdinand is as kind to animals as
the average village butcher. His British bio-
grapher remarks that " certain forms of so-called
' sport ' still tolerated in this country would
horrify him. He has a constitutional horror
of anything savouring of cruelty."

132 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

For instance, a Turkish fisherman not far from
his Euxinograd Palace captured a Black Sea seal,
and exhibited it at so much a head in the Port
of Varna. Ferdinand heard the news with a
disgust he did not attempt to conceal. For a
day he brooded over the sufferings of the poor
sea creature, and his birds and flowers did not
suffice to soothe his ruffled sensitiveness to pain
inflicted on a dumb creature. Finally he ordered
his car and drove down to the port, where he
purchased the captive for £24, and ordered it to be
set free in the sea. Then he returned to Euxino-
grad and recovered his equanimity by smelling
violets and gazing at cyclamens.

One can well imagine that such a king would
shrink from the sight of bloodshed. It is recorded
that, at the beginning of the first Balkan war, it
was his sad duty to look upon the first Bulgarian
wounded as they came into Stara Zagora. The
sight reduced him to bitter tears, and on his
bended knees he implored Heaven to spare him
any further sight of battle. It is only fair to
state that he has not since tempted Providence,
but has held studiously aloof from all scenes of
carnage, though unhappily at the head of an
army in the field. And when the sights of war
have come unpleasantly near him, with true
maidenly sensibility he has invariably turned
away his head.

FERDINAND AND THE
BULGARIANS

" I am the rock, against which the waves heat in vain ; I
am as the. oak in the forest." — ^Ferdinand or Bulqabia.

CHAPTEE XIII
FERDINAND AND THE BULGARIANS

I HAVE laid some stress upon the primitive
boorishness of the Bulgarians as a race,
and upon the essential effeminacy of the Prince
who, for lack of a better, was called to the throne
of this new principality. The contrast is neces-
sary in order that it may be shown by what
means Ferdinand established dominion over a
people which has always despised and loathed
him, and how he has been able to falsify the
confident estimate of the shrewdest observers
in Europe, and retain for over a quarter of a
century a position for which no one would at
any time have given a year's purchase.

The key to Bulgarian character was main-
tained by the Bulgarians themselves to be sim-
plicity. In Bulgaria there were no inherited
titles, no formalities, no niceties of social inter-
course. Like many a man who is incapable of

135

136 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

refinement and courtesy of manner, the Bul-
garians, by exaggerating their defects, produced
the impression of blunt honesty and straight-
forwardness. They prided themselves on their
Spartan simplicity, and were for ever talking
about it.

Their boastings about their lack of ceremoni-
ousness gave Ferdinand the clue to the weak
spot in the Bulgarian character. He knew that
the truly simple and unaffected man is not even
aware of the virtue of his simplicity ; that there
can be no such thing as a conscious sincerity in
such matters. And Ferdinand, the most artificial
product of the Courts of Europe, deliberately
chose that his Boeotian subjects should be a foil
to his own elegances.

He began, even in his bachelor days, by estab-
lishing a Court ruled by the stiffest formality.
This ceremony was doubled when he married, just
as his civil list was increased from £20,000 to
£40,000 a year. In the little city of Sofia, which
even now does not boast 100,000 inhabitants, he
maintained a household and a state which rivalled
that of the Kaiser himself, and far exceeded that
of any other reigning House of Europe.

His exits and entries were preceded by a band
of gorgeously uniformed attendants, who backed
before him waving wands of glittering whiteness.
Court etiquette of an exacting severity was

FEEDINAND AND THE BULGAEIANS 137

devised and scrupulously exacted. The Bul-
garians derided this ceremony openly and on
every occasion. But they conformed to it.

Eeally they were deeply impressed.

Ferdinand contrived a number of orders with
brilliant decorations ; they had had nothing of
the kind in Bulgaria before his coming. Hardly a
year passed but he added a new order to the list,
and conferred on his toadies the glittering decora-
tion it carried. The simple Bulgarians mocked
at these orders, and made endless jokes about
them. But there was keen competition for the
decorations, and no respectable Sofiete can
afford to be without one. Moreover, no decorated
Bulgarian ever fails to wear the little button
which marks him as decorated properly and
jewelled in every hole.

A few of the titles of the courtiers surrounding
Ferdinand may be specified, in order to show
how elaborate is the state maintained among
this simple peasant people. We have the
Chancellor of Bulgarian Orders, the Chief of the
Secret Cabinet, and two Secretaries, the Grand-
Almoner of the Prince of Tirnovo, the Court
Marshal, the Major-Domo, the Director of the
Civil List, the Master of Ceremonies, the Court
Physician, the Master of the Horse, the Inspector
of Cavalry, the Attach^ to the Queen, Mistress
of the Eobes, Court Poetess, Grand Mistress of

138 FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

the Court, Commandant of the Palace, and such
a host of attaches and aides-de-camp as was
never dreamt of outside a German Court of the
eighteenth century.

All this monstrous ceremony served a double
purpose with Ferdinand. It impressed the Bul-
garians, who could not themselves go the pace,
but had the secret snobbish admiration for such
things always found among people who profess
to regard simplicity as the chief among virtues.
It further gave him a reason for taking offence
at breaches of Court etiquette, and allowed him
to penalize people against whom he could furbish
up no other complaint.

Thus Stambuloff was continually infringing
the rules of the Court. The Prime Minister,
who had enjoyed a large income as the first
advocate in Bulgaria, drew from his grateful
country the salary of £500 for controlling its
destinies in the teeth of an ungrateful Prince
and an inappreciative people. To him the formal
Court and the sinful waste it involved was really
a source of offence. His open disregard for the
childish forms it was sought to impose upon him
was soon made a source of offence by the King,
and even by the meek little Princess Marie Louise.

The effect of this regal extravagance was felt
not only in Sofia itself, but throughout Bulgaria.
Ferdinand was pleased to travel widely in his

FEEDINAND AND THE BULGAEIANS 139

principality, and with some considerable elabora-
tion of ceremony. The little municipalities he
honoured with his visits had to prepare a ruinous
hospitality in advance. A visit from the Prince
beggared a community and left it bankrupt for
years. Ferdinand ate up little villages like a
locust, and earned the deep detestation of the
impoverished peasants.

But he impressed them at the same time. And
so he gained his object, he established a moral
ascendency over the boors, who professed an
exaggerated simplicity, and bowed down before
ceremonies which made them look ridiculous,
and extravagances which impoverished them.

The needs of the country, when Ferdinand
accepted the throne, were many and essential.
Roads and railways had to be built to develop
the nascent agricultural industry which has been
the mainstay of Bulgarian national life. The
work was taken in hand by Stambuloff, whose
plans for the progress of the country, even
more than his foreign policy, reveal him as the
statesman that his admirers have always pro-
claimed him. His policy of internal development
entailed heavy taxation, under which the country
groaned, and which earned him, more than any-
thing else, the title of Tyrant, which Ferdinand
thrust upon him.

With his fall the policy of internal development

140 FEBDINAND OF BULGARIA

was brought to a standstill, but the taxation
continued. Ferdinand employed much of the
money in the creation of a capital city worthy of
such a Prince and such a Court. He set about
the creation of a new Sofia, taking as his motto
" Expense is no object." A modern city was
run up with a celerity and elaboration that
reminded visitors of the creation of Johannesburg.

M. Alexandre Hepp, the enthusiastic French
biographer of Ferdinand, almost exhausts his
enthusiasm in recounting the marvels of this
recreation of an old city. " It seems like a new
city imposed upon one already renewed," he
writes. " Every time I visit it I find something
added — a monument, a museum, a park, a govern-
ment office, a bank, an hotel, a factory, a theatre,
or a school. New boulevards and streets, wide,
well-paved, planted with trees, lined with kiosques,
cross and re-cross. Lions and eagles ornament
the new bridges. Electricity flares, the tramcars
roar, motor-cars dash about. Near the statue
to the Czar Liberator, designed by Zocchi, rears
the finished structure of the great cathedral
Newski, built at a cost of £1,000,000 raised by
public subscription. Great markets are rising
from their foundations." And so on.

All this work was done under the personal
supervision of Ferdinand himself. " Behind a
corner window of the palace," writes Mr. John

FEEDINAND AND THE BULGAEIANS 141

Macdonald, who has produced an English
biography of Czar Ferdinand, which only falls
short in enthusiasm of the ecstasies of M. Hepp,
" overlooking the highway, is the Czar's private
study, where he often works till the first hour or
two of the morning. Piles of street plans, of
monumental drawings, of designs for the splendid
park and gardens, with their new palace, have
been examined behind that corner window."

The sophistication of the Bulgarians having
been begun by the creation of this fine city in the
midst of the gloomy plains of Bulgaria, Ferdinand
continued it by the creation of a powerful military
caste.

The dominant note of Sofia is military ; there
are gay uniforms at every turn. " With their
great grey cloaks in the Eussian style," writes
M. Hepp, " their white helmets and immaculate
gloves, or buckled in their long frogged tunics,
with their swords swinging by silken sabre-
taches, the officers present a fine appearance.
They swarm at the new Army Club and at the
restaurant of the Eed Crab."

The new Sofia, too, has produced a citizen
class which already disdains the peasant sim-
plicity which was the hall-mark of the Bulgarian
nation in the time of Stambuloff. They affect
fine manners and wit, they try to smile where
the old-time' Bulgar was a gloomy churl. These

142 FEEDmAND OF BULGAEIA

parvenu niceties are ostentatious, and sit but
ill upon people to whom they are far from natural ;
they are accompanied by much chatter about art,
for Sofia has already produced its clan of " intel-
lectuals."

But Ferdinand has maintained his distance
with the new Bulgarians as with the old. To be
hooted at the theatre by a mob of students is no
rare experience with him ; it drives every vestige
of colour from his flabby cheeks. But he will
not stoop to conciliate, even in Sofia. His
predecessor was a frank young man, who made
himself adored by the Bulgarians by meeting
them openly and making their life his own.
He won love, but no semblance of respect.

Warned by the experience and the fate of
Alexander, Ferdinand has always continued to
treat every Bulgarian with the utmost reticence.
For them there are no confidences ; none of the
graces of the Fat Charmer are expended upon
winning the hearts of Bulgarians. He prefers
to be detested, to be feared, to excite a puzzled
antipathy.

And there is the secret of the long reign of a
Prince over whom the shadow of assassination
and the dread of deposition have floated ever
since his first appearance in Sofia. The Bul-
garians despise what they understand, they have
a contempt for those who stoop to please them.

FEEDINAND AND THE BULGABIANS 143

They keep a regard for Ferdinand because he
treats them as an inferior race ; in their heart
of hearts they are proud to be ruled by this fine
product of two races who, in the words of one
of their own writers, " combines German steadi-
ness with French dash."

A nobler race would have sent Ferdinand
packing long ago ; he knew the measure of their
boorishness, and turned it to his own account
with a craft that cannot be denied him. And
so Ferdinand has escaped assassination and
deposition for more than a quarter of a century.

What ambitions he has begotten, and what
schemes he has launched in that period, we shall
now see.

FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS

" / drink to Czar Ferdinand, the heir to Constantine."-

SOME FtTDDIiED YANKEE SCRIBE.

CHAPTEE XIV
FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS

IN the summer of 1892 there was a notable
sight in the Bavarian city of Munich. The
richest goldsmith of the city of breweries dis-
played in his window a crown, sceptre, orb and
sword, which he had made to the order of the
Prince of Bulgaria. The rich jewels with which
the regalia were decked were the family gems
of the Princess Clementine, who had presented
them to her pet son, in anticipation of the recogni-
tion by the Powers which both fondly believed
to be imminent.

But the anticipation was not realized, and
Ferdinand had not even the money to pay the
goldsmith for his work. A lawsuit was initiated
against him, and at the same time the aggrieved
tradesman displayed the jewels in his shop
window, where they drew a daily crowd. To
stop the scandal the Princess Clementine stepped
in and footed the bill ; and the jewels were stored

147

148 FEEDINA:ND of BULGARIA

at her Ebenthal Palace until such time as they
should be needed — not, as a matter of fact,
until after her death.

The story illustrates the long-cherished ambi-
tion of the Bulgar Czar to reign supreme in his
own realm ; but that, after all, is perhaps a compre-
hensible ambition for the grandson of Louis
Philippe and the descendant of Francis I. But
the extent of the ambitions of the lesser Czar
is not grasped by those who think that his am-
bitions are bounded by his wish to rule as the
recognized sovereign of that Greater Bulgaria
which was set up by Russia through the treaty of
San Stefano. Ferdinand's dreams are wilder
by far than those wide boundaries would justify.

In the grounds of his Euxinograd Palace at the
port of Varna is a little hill, from the crest of
which can be obtained a spacious view across the
Black Sea. On the summit the Prince caused to be
erected a throne, and to this spot he would daily
repair when spending his leisure at Euxinograd.
Seated on this throne he would sit for hours gaz-
ing over the calm waters toward Constantinople ;
looking inscrutably out toward the Byzantium
which was for so long the centre of Eastern power
and the capital of the Empire of the East.

IiiTot long before the outbreak of the great war
he employed a well-known Vienna specialist
in heraldry and genealogy to trace his descent,

FEEDINAND THE AMBITIOUS 149

and to endeavour to link up his family with that
of the ancient Bulgarian Czars. All things are
possible to a Vienna specialist with a royal
conunission, and it is not surprising to learn that
the antiquarian was entirely successful.

Ferdinand, it appears, traces his descent, in
common with the Kaiser, to Philip of Hohen-
zoUern, who married a descendant of the Byzan-
tine Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Now Alexius
had as wife Irene, who was daughter of Maria,
the only daughter of the Bulgarian Czar Samuel.
What better claim, then, than that of Ferdinand,
not only to the Czardom of Bulgaria, but to
imperial sway in the new Eastern realm of which
the modern Byzantium must inevitably be the
capital.

Indeed Constantinople has gained a hold of
his fertile imagination that may account for the
supreme and audacious treachery of his conduct
during the past few years. He dreams, this
Prince of a pot-house, of erecting his throne in
the city which he last visited wearing the red
fez of vassalage. The dream is no new one.
When the great assembly had gathered at Tirnovo
to witness the apostasy of the infant Boris, Fer-
dinand's uncle, the witty old Due d'Aumale,
ventured on some satirical congratulations. " I
congratulate you, Ferdinand," he said, " your
son is now orthodox, it will be your turn next."

150 FEBDINAND OF BULGAEIA

But Ferdinand, wrapped in his megalomania,
failed to detect the jocularity. " I have been
thinking about this for some time," he answered
earnestly ; " I have fixed my baptism in a church,
and in circumstances, which will certainly recon-
cile you to my act."

" And where, and under what circumstances
will it happen ? "

" It will take place at St. Sophia, under the
thunder of Bulgarian guns."

This conversation, it must be remembered,
took place soon after the fall of Stambuloff and
the murder of that strong man, which removed
from the path of Ferdinand the only obstacle
in Bulgaria to the unchecked attainment of
his wishes in that country. It is to be borne
in mind as the predominating motive in all his
acts from that time forward. It shaped his
foreign policy, and affords the sole key to his
method of dealing with the internal affairs of
Bulgaria.

As I shall make clear later, it was the motive
which caused him to form with his neighbours
the Balkan League, ostensibly to free the Chris-
tians in Macedonia and Thrace from Turkish
oppression. The real motive became apparent
after the battle of Lule Burgas, when the Turks
fled before the victorious Bulgarians.

When the Turks finally came to bay at the

FEEDINA:ND the ambitious 151

lines of Chatalja, a peace whereby the Allies
would have gained all they ostensibly sought
was offered by Kiamil Pasha. Ferdinand, with-
out consulting his Allies, rejected it ; and against
the wish of his Army Council began the attack
of Chatalja, which proved so disastrous to the
Bulgarian arms.

Speaking in the Sobranje in 1914, the Bulgarian
delegate Kosturoff said, " As was shown later on,
the only purpose was to enter Constantinople.
The ambition, the boundless ambition, was to
place the Cross on the Mosque of St. Sophia, in
order that history should some day write, ' Simeon
came once beneath the walls of Constantinople,
but the Greek women broke his head there. It
was Czar Ferdinand who entered Constantinople
as victor.' "

This ambition of Ferdinand's, to possess Con-
stantinople and make it the capital of a new
Bulgarian Empire, has only to be grasped to
enable the reader to gain a full comprehension
of the policy which has thrown Ferdinand into
the field of battle on the side of the Central Powers,
and allied the Bulgarians in arms with their
ancient and hereditary enemies the Turks. It
must be remembered that the difficulty of dis-
posing of Constantinople when the Turks shall
have been deprived of its possession has remained
for nearly a century the sole reason why the

152 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

crescent still floats over the minarets of Stamboul.
The inevitable end of Ottoman rule in Europe,
though hastened by the fatal blunder which threw
Turkey into the fray with the Teuton races, was
none the less inevitable in the sight of all thinking
men long before the first Balkan war.

Men all over Europe conceived a new Eastern
Empire, which was to spring from the union of
the Christian races in the Balkans. It was to
have its centre in Constantinople, the centre of a
beneficent rule, where all the Balkan States were
working to a common end to remove from their
countries the reproach that is held in the oft-
repeated phrase, the " Plague-spot of Europe."

Eussia saw it as the triumph of the Slav race.
France saw the Latin idea conquering Teuton
" kultur." Great Britain dreamed of the victory
of Christianity over the heathen. And all the
time Ferdinand stood by his throne at Euxino-
grad, and dreamed and schemed and plotted.
Eaces and creeds alike were of no account to
Ferdinand, the man of no race who had com-
mitted apostasy in the person of his own infant
son. He, the fop, the scented darling of French
drawing-rooms, saw himself the heir to Con-
stantine, the successful imitator of the great
Bulgarian Czars Samuel and Simeon. They
were stopped only at the walls of Constantinople ;
but Ferdinand did not plan to stop there.

FEEDINAND THE AMBITIOUS 153

That insane ambition governed every step he
has taken for fifteen years. It brought him and
Bulgaria perilously near to annihilation in the
Balkan wars. It made treaties for him the veriest
scraps of paper. It moulded his conduct and
dictated his alliances.

How he has conducted the Bulgarian people
along the path which leads away from their racial
ties as well as from the obligations imposed upon
them by their indebtedness for their very existence
as a nation will shortly be told.

But first it will be interesting to know something
more of the man who is obsessed by this wild
ambition, always unattainable, but rendered
doubly unattainable now by the deeds of men
more ambitious, more unscrupulous, and a
hundred times more powerful than he.

FERDINAND THE FUTILE

" The Prince is undoubtedly a clever man ; hut he wastes
his cleverness on petty matters." — STAMBtrLOFr.

CHAPTEE XV
FERDINAND THE FUTILE

THE tradition that great monarclis are
many-sided men has no warmer adherent
than Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who is ever ready to
exemplify it in his own person. To those who are
familiar with his pursuits and amusements, his
method of spending his days constitutes a most
cruel parody upon the thousand different avoca-
tions of his " glorious ally " the Kaiser. But
the Kaiser, as I have had occasion to show else-
where, is in many respects a remarkable and
successful man, who makes practical use of his
wide store of information. Ferdinand's alleged
serious occupations are a daily round of sheer
futilities.

For instance, some portion of the Kaiser's
day was always spent in reading a selection of
Press cuttings carefully chosen for him, and by
this means he was able to keep abreast with
current news, commerce, inventions, and art.

157

158 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Ferdinand is also a close student of newspapers,
whichi lie studies with the sole object of reading
what is written about himself. When he finds
anything that displeases him, he tears up the
offending news-sheet into little pieces, swearing
most savagely.

When he first went to Bulgaria, there was
great destruction of newspapers by him, for it
was hard to find a paper that could say anything
good about him. Indeed, it is recorded that
his mother. Princess Clementine, wept tears of
pure joy when for the first time she saw an
appreciative account of her darling in an impor-
tant French daily.

Stambuloff annoyed the Prince beyond all
forgiveness by his early comments on this weak-
ness. " Do not read so many papers," he used
to say, " but study public affairs. Get a French
or English colonel to teach you the elements of
military knowledge, so that you may be able
to understand your War Minister." But Fer-
dinand's egotism caused this excellent if blunt
counsel to be rejected ; and to this day he is
unable really to understand his War Minister.

After a time he evolved a fine method of seeing
nice things about himself in the papers. Any
one can do it, especially a reigning Prince. The
art lies in being very kind to journalists — of a
certain type. Once Ferdinand had mastered

FERDINAND THE FUTILE 159

this art ; which is colloquially known as " squar-
ing the Press " — no Prince got so many favourable
notices as he. He was just as confidential and
communicative to a foreign journalist as he was
reticent and baffling to a Bulgarian notable.

Yet Ferdinand, among other qualifications,
is the easiest monarch to interview in all Europe,
and is almost as accessible as some of the dusky
princes of Afric's sunny interior. The scene
is usually mon fumoir, and begins with the
exhibition of a sketch of the Czar's predecessor,
Prince Alexander of Battenberg — "Bulgaria's
hero," says Ferdinand with becoming emotion.

Then there is the stuffed eagle which Ferdinand
shot himself " with a valorous gunshot," as M.
Hepp says. And the little silver truck in which
he keeps the first spadeful of earth dug up by
himself to commemorate the opening of the rail-
way line to Bui'gas. You must see that, and the
golden keys of the Palace, as they were presented
to him on the day he did his " sacred duty,"
and set foot on Bulgarian soil.

Then he rings an electric bell, to show how
clever Prince Cyril has fitted out the Palace with
these marvels, laying all the wires himself. All
his children are bidden to cultivate useful hobbies,
the Bulgarian Czar will tell you, very much after
the manner of Mr. Subbubs when he has lured
you to Lonelitown for a week-end.

160 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Thus, as an American scribe who had endured
the process told me, Ferdinand " pulls domestic
stuff on you." He actually told one American
— and his newspaper printed it — that his fondness
for his children had saved his life from the vile
assassin. According to Ferdinand, he was play-
ing with his young children peacefully in the
palace garden, when a Stambulovist emissary
crept stealthily behind him with a dagger. But
the rough man was so touched at the sight of
this proud Bourbon playing with his innocent
children just like any ordinary man, that he
wiped away a tear, threw down his yataghan,
and fled, sorely pricked by his conscience.

With some of his visitors Ferdinand affects
the martyr, and tells how badly he is misunder-
stood, and how shamefully he is misrepresented.
With others he is the genial man-of-the-world,
and tells stories that involve the laying of his
forefinger on the side of his long dishonourable
nose — a favourite trick of his when he displays any
portion of his stock of knowingness. To others
again he tells stories of his kindness to animals.

On this count let me quote the beautiful anec-
dote of " The Prince and the Sparrow," as t\)uch-
ingly related by M. Hepp, who had it from the
mouth of this kind-hearted monarch.

One day, when Ferdinand was out walking,
he found a poor little sparrow, which had fallen

FEEDINAND THE FUTILE 161

right in his path. He took it up in his hand,
cherished it, and carried it with him to the Palace,
where he gave orders that it should be carefully
tended.

Some time later he was sitting at Council sur-
rounded by his ministers, engrossed in serious
affairs of State. At this juncture the thought
of the poor little sparrow occurred to him. He
rang for an attendant, and demanded instant
news of the sad little cripple.

It is not astonishing, says M. Hepp, that with
such a charm of sensibility the Prince attracts
to him all shrinking souls.

Now read another instance of his charming
sensibility, for the truth of which I can vouch,
though Ferdinand himself has never related the
story, to my knowledge.

Animated by a sense of duty, he set out to see
the tomb of his uncle, the Prince de Joinville,
at Eu, near Paris. But when, with his Grand
Chamberlain, he reached the mortuary chapel,
he found the door locked. The priest, it was
explained, had gone away and taken the key
with him. Should it be sent for ? " ^o, no ;
don't trouble," said Ferdinand, immensely re-
lieved, " let us go and get some lunch." This
they did, and the subject of dead uncles was not
referred to, even over the coffee.

Naturally Ferdinand dabbles in the fine arts.

L

162 FEEDIKAND OF BULGAEIA

He does wonderful things with a camera, and
plays the piano most beautifully. Once he com-
posed the libretto of an opera, and took some
part in the arrangement of the music. When I
think that the people of Sofia had to listen to
that opera, my conscience smites me for some
of the harsh things I have written about the
Bulgarians. They have done wrong, certainly ;
but they have suffered. I have read that libretto,
and I know.

Another much-vaunted accomplishment of
the Shoddy Czar is his skill as an engine-driver.
He is said to be quite at his best on the foot-
plate of a locomotive. I remember what a com-
motion there was on the boulevards one summer
evening when the news went round that Ferdi-
nand was approaching Paris dressed as an engine-
driver, and actually driving the locomotive of
the train which was bearing him to the City of
Light. What a rush there was to the railway
station, and what a gang of secret police ! But
the Bulgarian Prince had dismounted from the
cab at Abbeville, and indulged in a wash and a
brush-up before he reached the city.

On another occasion, when he was staying at
Bad-Neuheim, he asked permission to drive a
train to Frankfort and back, and this was granted.
There was quite a crowd to greet him when the
journey was finished, but his beaming face was

FEEDINAND THE FUTILE 163

all clouded when a sarcastic lady stepped for-
ward and handed him a bouquet inscribed with
the simple word " Bravery." The best way
out of the ridiculous situation that he could
devise was to hand the flowers to the real engine-
driver, with the remark, " This lady has confused
you with me, my friend."

On another occasion he was telling some journa-
list of his skill on the engine-plate, and this man,
wishing to please him, remarked that the accom-
plishment was a useful one, and might one day
save his life. It was a tactless remark to make
to a man of sensibility.

" I am sorry I have no locomotive now," he
growled, " to escape from such silly remarks."

Yet it is difficult to imagine any use for what
appears to be the nearest thing to a manly accom-
plishment he possesses. Unless he wants to run
away from somewhere, his engine driving is
hardly likely to be of any benefit to himself or
anyone else.

It is a futile accomplishment, as nearly all his
occupations and amusements are futile. Com-
pared with such a king as our own, who does an
immense amount of hard, useful work, in an
unassuming way ; or even with the Kaiser, who
makes a lot of fuss, but certainly gets a good deal
done, this Ferdinand is surely a make-believe
monarch.

164 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

He sits in his thug-proof den, surrounded by his
photographs and his absurd silver model of a rail-
way truck and other trumpery, and allows it to be
understood that his labours of State keep him up
to all hours of the morning. But the net result
of his labours is a new f§te dress for himself,
some fault-finding with the garden plans of a
landscape expert, or something equally useless.

With the exception of the expensive capital,
Bulgaria remains as Stambuloff left it. He claims,
this shoddy Czar, that he has worked unremit-
tingly to improve a semi-barbarous kingdom ;
while he has been engaged in the most trifling
and useless occupations. Beyond ministering to
his own inordinate vanity, and scheming darkly to
some one else's disadvantage, all his occupations
are as childishly futile as those I have described.

FERDINAND THE FRENCHMAN

" It is a Prince entirely French, by tradition, by instinct,
by aspiration, and by talent who was the founder of Bulgaria,
and is to-day its King.^' — M. Alexandre Hepp.

CHAPTER XVI
FERDINAND THE FRENCHMAN

ONE of the lessons that Great Britain has been
compelled to learn in the last two years is
that its respected citizen, Mr. Black, purveyor
of meat, is in reality none other than that danger-
ous alien Herr Schwartz, the maker of German
sausages. Our gallant allies of France have been
apt to wonder at the laggard hesitation of us
British in learning and applying this lesson.
Yet when the history of the great war comes to
be written frankly and fully, it may well be re-
vealed that one of the hardest knocks delivered
to the allied cause was due to the incurably
optimistic idea prevailing among Frenchmen in
the highest places that Ferdinand Saxe-Coburg
Cohen was really Ferdinand de Bourbon.

It is nothing to their discredit. To the very
last most of us clung to the idea that the Kaiser
was really an Englishman, though he did little

167

168 FEEDINAND OF BTJLGAEIA

to foster that idea, and Ms upbringing, his speeches
and his behaviour were shining testimony to the
contrary. Ferdinand, on the other hand, had
an upbringing that was essentially characteristic
of the old France ; not that new France which
fills the whole civilized world with delight and
admiration. He has constantly posed as French
in culture, in sympathy and in aim. France
early took him to its generous arms, and there
is every excuse for the French trusting in his
blandishments ; the generous spirit of France
is incapable of crediting that any man of French
extraction could stoop to such perfidy as Ferdinand
has displayed.

If France was open to the accusation of degener-
acy half a century ago, the fact was largely due
to the method of educating its boys. The
supreme irony of fate has exacted this compensa-
tion for the horrors inflicted by Germany upon
stricken France in 1870, that the full measure
of punishment now impending over the Hunnish
race is the result of these infamies. The new
France is the outcome of that disaster, and the
new Frenchman of to-day, steeled to patient
endurance, yet fighting with all the dash of his
ancestors, is the result of wiser methods of
education.

But Ferdinand was brought up as one of the
degenerate Frenchmen of the past age. At fifteen

FEEDINAND THE FEENCHMAN 169

he knew more of the dark side of life than any
hardened man of the world ought to know. At
twenty he was a loathsome young beast, whose
only admirer was his doting mother. She was
a daughter of France, and everywhere surrounded
herself and her son with the historic objects she
had inherited from her great French ancestors.

When Ferdinand crossed his Eubicon and
ventured on that hazardous journey in disguise
to Sofia, against the wish of all the European
Powers, his companions on the voyage were
gallant and adventurous young Frenchmen. The
elegant Court he formed in Bulgaria was redeemed
from absurdity by the grace, wit and refinement of
these companions and their successors. The first
champions of Ferdinand, and his apologists
through good and evil, have been the French.

I have referred many times in this chronicle
to the French biographer of Ferdinand, the
enthusiastic M. Hepp. He has written so charm-
ingly and with such obvious and honest sincerity
of this Hun in French clotliing that it is impossible
to overlook his work. It represents current
French opinion of the Bulgarian Czar, who, up
to the very last moment, contrived to deceive
even such keen-eyed publicists as M. Eeinach.

The amazing confidences Ferdinand has made
to M. Hepp are set out in this surprisingly
intimate biography, in which one long chapter

170 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

is devoted to proving Ferdinand's possession by
the French sentiment.

The first time that the Prince invited his bio-
grapher to dinner was on a very picturesque
occasion. They were travelling together to
Eoumelia to take part in the rose harvest and
festival at the scent farms of Kazanlik. The
luxury of the train by which they travelled was
extravagant. Blue velvet upholstered the ordin-
ary compartments, the sleeping carriages were
furnished in silk of turquoise tint, the dining-
saloon was a mass of blue flowers in baskets.
Eightly was it called the Blue Train.

Seated opposite Ferdinand in the midst of all
this azure pomp, the writer was suddenly brought
face to face with a fresh emotion. On every
fork and spoon, on every piece of the massive
silver plate was engraved the French fleur-de-
lis. They marked the descent of the Bulgarian
royal couple ; the Prince as grandson of Louis
Philippe, the Princess Marie Louise as grand-
daughter of Charles X.

Even more moving to his biographer was a
scene enacted by Ferdinand when his mother
lay awaiting burial and the mock Frenchman
was dressing for the funeral. He was assuming
all his decorations — German ones — when the
Due de Luynes was announced. " Come in,"
cried Ferdinand, and as the Due entered he

FERDINAND THE FRENCHMAN 171

unbuttoned his waistcoat and threw it back.
There next his heart blazed the broad red ribbon
of the French Legion of Honour, once worn by
Louis Philippe himself.

Later Ferdinand was entitled to wear that
ribbon, but this clandestine assumption of it was
a piece of theatrical sentiment, justly calculated
to tickle the sensibilities of the most level-headed
Frenchman. As M. Hepp narrates, he after-
wards told the story to three intimates, very
Parisian and sceptical, and the hardest of them
all was constrained to turn away his head and
wipe his eyes.

It is interesting to note how Ferdinand played
upon this French sympathy, and how adroitly
he made use of it. From Paris he arranged the
reconciliation with Russia which followed the
conversion of Prince Boris to the Orthodox faith,
and France was the first country to f§te him in
the ceremonious way his heart yearned for.

" At the Elysee," writes Mr. John Macdonald,
" the successor of the French kings and emperors
royally entertained the Orleanist Prince who was
so successfully introducing French culture and
manners into a semi-Oriental land ; or almost
royally, for the Prince was as yet only half a
king. Semi-royal honours only could be accorded
to the Prince of Bulgaria ; half a gala at the
Opera, half a military manoeuvre, and so on."

172 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

But to Ferdinand lialf a loaf was indeed better
than no bread. When lie demanded royal
honours prior to a visit to England for the funeral
of Queen Victoria he was bluntly told he could
not have them. Therefore he decided to stay
away. France, however, did her best for
Ferdinand.

He paid his debts in a characteristic manner.
For the reorganization of the Bulgarian Army
he went to France, and there borrowed money,
equipment and military advisers. The French
artillery enabled the Bulgarians to score so
heavily over the Turks in their first encounters,
and what of generalship the Bulgarian leaders
possess is undoubtedly due to their French tuition.
The Bulgarian Black Sea fleet was of French
organization, and its first admiral was a French
naval officer named Pichon.

If further evidence was needed that Ferdinand
wore a golden French heart under his hereditary
German and Austrian decorations, as he wore
his illicit ribbon of the Legion of Honour, let me
tell you one more story from the collection of the
excellent M. Hepp.

It was July 14, the anniversary of the fall of
the Bastille, and Ferdinand had asked to his
Varna Palace M. Bourgarel, the French Minister
at Sofia, and the faithful Hepp. They dined
in the open air at the foot of Mount Vitosch.

FEEDINAND THE FRENCHMAN 173

Suddenly, from behind a thicket, there rose the
strains of the Marseillaise, while Ferdinand,
rising to his feet, shouted " Vive la France ! "

Yes, France felt very sure of Ferdinand, and
Bulgaria could always count upon warm friend-
ship in Paris, and wherever French influence
was felt. His perfidy was not suspected till
nearly the end of 1914 when M. Joseph Reinach,
who had maintained a long correspondence with
him ever since their first meeting in 1906, began
to form suspicions. He framed a letter to Fer-
dinand on February 11, 1915, to the effect that
he had to express the uneasiness he was feeling,
and which all the French friends of Bulgaria
and its Czar felt at recent news.

Ferdinand, in a letter signed " The Good
European," his usual signature in this corre-
spondence, told him not to believe the news,
adding, " My sentiments remain unchanged."
Even then he was bargaining with the enemies
of France to betray the cause of the Entente
and of the small nations !

The Bulgarian treaty with Germany was
signed on July 17, but on August 15 Ferdinand's
Minister, M. Dobrovitch, was writing to Paris
expressing false hopes of a future Russian success,
and holding out elusive promises that Bulgaria
would intervene on the side of the Allies.

" A more shameful comedy has never been

174 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

enacted," writes M. Eeinach, in concluding the
story o/f Ferdinand's final rupture with the
country which he claimed was dearest of all
to him, the country of his mother and of his
own upbringing.

FERDINAND THE FAITHLESS

" Ingratitude is the only unforgivable sin." — Old Bul-
GAJEUAN Proverb.

" Ferdinand is a clever man, hut not to he trusted" — Kino
Edward VII.

CHAPTEE XVII
FERDINAND THE FAITHLESS

IN the chief square of Sofia, near the Newski
Cathedral, stands a great statue, the work
of the Bulgarian sculptor Zocchi. It is erected
to the Eussian Czar, Alexander the Second,
" the Czar Liberator." A similar statue has been
erected in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Tir-
novo. In every peasant hut in Bulgaria a portrait
of the same benefactor is hung; sometimes it
disputes wall space with pictures of Gladstone
and Lord Salisbury. These are some of the
outward signs that Bulgaria has allowed a despic-
able foreigner to lead them into the deadliest
ingratitude, and to make them pay their debt
for national existence by the basest perfidy of
which a whole nation has ever been guilty.

When the Eussians discovered the survival
of the ancient Bulgarians they found a race of

177 M

178 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

hopeless outcasts, groaning under a Turkish
tyranny that has its recent parallel in the Turkish
treatment of the Christian Armenians. Later,
when the most enterprising Bulgarians sought
to free themselves from this intolerable oppres-
sion, the only means open to them were those
resorted to by outlaws and murderers. They
became modern Eobin Hoods, without any of
the elementary decency which characterized
the behaviour of that legendary English hero.

Eussia from the very outset recognized the
claims imposed upon her by racial and religious
affinity to the Bulgarians. How generously she
paid that obligation may be read in the terms
of the treaty of San Stefano. The Powers of
Europe saw fit to revise the terms of that treaty,
and Britain's sympathy for small and oppressed
people ensured that the nation so revived by
Eussia should not be blotted out of existence.

The Bulgaria created by the treaty of Berlin
was a small and unimportant Principality. Its
aggrandisement has been effected by innumerable
breaches of that compact, one of which was the
very assumption by Ferdinand of the throne.
For that reason the new Prince, as I have already
told, was not recognized by the Powers, and
his vanity made their recognition all important
to him.

The policy of Stambuloff, who then guided the

FEEDINAND THE FAITHLESS 179

destinies of Bulgaria, was to free the young
State from any preponderance of Eussian influ-
ence. Adherence to that policy would have
delayed the recognition Ferdinand sought, and
for that elementary reason he betrayed Stam-
buloff, and became morally guilty of his assassina-
tion. By contriving the apostasy of his heir,
he so far placated Eussia that his position was
recognized. From that time forward he always
professed the most profuse gratitude to the great
Slav Power to which he owed his place and Bul-
garia owed its very existence.

Is there any need to elaborate the sordid
treachery of his conduct ? As a bachelor Prince
his life was not worth a day's purchase at any
time. In order that he might marry, Stambuloff
had the Constitution amended, thereby earning
an unpopularity with the Church party which
contributed largely to his fall. He had already
made himself detested by the army because of
the severity with which he crushed out the plots
against the life of his ungrateful Prince.

The services he had rendered to Ferdinand
were made the weapons of his undoing. Dis-
missed, impoverished and persecuted with the
vilest charges, Stambuloff was imprisoned in Sofia
until such time as his murder could be contrived.
And while his minister's unavenged blood was yet
warm this monster of ingratitude was concluding

180 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

with the dead man's enemies a pact in which
blasphemy and treachery played equal parts.
For the patronage of Eussia he caused a child
of three to become an apostate from the faith
in which he had been baptized, and broke the
heart of his gentle Princess.

That he lived to betray the friendship for
which he paid such an infamous price will
be made abundantly clear. In the meantime
Bulgaria's lip service to Eussia is worth con-
sidering.

" We find Eussian graves scattered all over
our country," wrote the Mir at the time of Stam-
buloff's fall. " The men who rest in them shed
their blood for us. But where are the English,
Italian, Austrian, German graves ? "

When Ferdinand entered Bulgaria and was
received in Sofia, the Metropolitan Bishop re-
minded him of the national debt, after a few
words of personal welcome, saying, " This people
is grateful to Eussia, who made immense sacrifices
for our deliverance, and to whom we owe our
liberty and independence. Do not then forget
these sacrifices, and use your best efforts to
re-establish relations between Eussia and Bulgaria
— to reconcile the Liberator and the liberated."

A quarter of a century later the Mir was
writing : " The healthiest minds among the
Bulgarian people, realizing that they were freed

FEEDINAND THE FAITHLESS 181

by Eussia in the name of the same idea which
at this moment is creating a great Slav Empire,
are conscious of the existence of a bond of blood,
but are unable to act in accordance with it."

They were unable, because Ferdinand had
made it impossible. How he had done this is
explained by M. Buroff, once a minister and
a leading Bulgarian publicist. In the Almanac
of the National Party, for 1915, he explains
that the Court gave strong support to all opposi-
tion to Eussia. All other views lead their holders
to persecution and dismissal. In the Army
" the higher the rank held by an officer, the more
dependent he is upon his expressed hatred of
Eussia. It is the means by which officers may secure
the dignity of generalship. It is from the Court
that this poison spreads as if by some mysterious
agency."

How widespread this poison was, and how
effectively Ferdinand had broken all ties that
should have bound Bulgaria to the great Mother
of the Slav races was recognized in Eussia. The
fact provoked an outburst from the Eussian
poet Andreef, which might well have shamed
a less cynical people to some revolt against a
king so monstrously treacherous.

" The Slav world is stricken with shame, and
turns its eyes earthward whenever the name
Bulgarian is mentioned, in the same way as an

182 FEEDINAND OF BULGABIA

honourable family is ashamed of the unworthy-
member. You Bulgars have a Slav heart but
German brains, and your tongue, like that of the
snake, is split in twain. ... If the Germans
keep you fastened like sheep within the fold
while your brothers' blood is being spilled, or if
your shepherds lead you along the pathway of
treachery and you, like other belligerents, com-
mence to banish the Eussians from Bulgaria,
then first of all, take from your midst the monu-
ment of Alexander's tomb — he who freed you
— for he also was a Eussian."

M. Joseph Eeinach, who was first introduced
to Ferdinand by King Edward VII, and who
maintained a correspondence with him, has de-
clared that when the time comes for the final
publication of the documents relative to the
Bulgarian treachery, they will furnish an example
of disloyalty and treachery unexampled in the
records of the chancellery.

" I am very sure," adds this authority, " that
if the Eussians, instead of being conquered in
Poland and Galicia, had won, the Czar of the
Bulgarians would have treated with the Triple
Alliance instead of betraying his past and his
honour in selling his armies to the Germans."

" Eussia was trusting, and I myself was
deceived into believing with Shakespeare, that
there is no such thing as an utterly bad man.

FEEDINAND THE FAITHLESS 183

The Serbians have a proverb which explains
Eussia's blind faith in the Shoddy Czar. 'A
woman who has wet-nursed a calf loves it like
her own child.' So Eussia loved Bulgaria, a
circumstance which makes Bulgaria's crime more
detestable still."

FERDINAND THE HUN

" There is nothing I detest as much as a German." — The
Pbincess Clementine.

CHAPTEE XVIII
FERDINAND THE HUN

WHEN Ferdinand first rode through the
streets of Sofia in a carriage, wearing the
uniform of a Bulgarian general, there was an
ominous murmur in the Bulgarian crowd that
rose and swelled to a hoarse cry of " Schwaba."
It was as if a French crowd had cried " Boche "
or an English mob had roared " Hun." Austrian
rank and French pretence did not blind the Bul-
garians at the very outset ; they knew they had
to do with one of the detested Schwaba, a Hun
of the Huns.

Do what he might, Ferdinand could not lift
the reproach among the race he chooses to call
his adopted people. To them, now as ever, he is
the Hun. In normal times they turn away their
heads as the Schwaba drives by ; when he has
done anything special to annoy them they gather
under his palace windows and yell, " Down
with the modern Nero." No wonder Ferdinand

187

188 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

prefers to spend the major portion of his time in
the country at Euxinograd, or on the Coburg-
Cohen estates in Hungary, where, as the Count of
Murany, he is fond of assuring his visitors that he
is now in his " second Fatherland."

When he dismissed Stambuloff, he remarked,
" Henceforth I mean to govern as well as to rule."
It was much what the Kaiser said when he got
rid of Bismarck, but Ferdinand had a counsellor
of greater experience than any of those who were
called to the assistance of William II when Bis-
marck had been humiliated. He had always
his wise old mother at his elbow, the shrewdest and
most disinterested adviser that any princeling
was ever blessed with. And, by following the
advice of his mother, he contrived to convert his
very temporary occupation of the Bulgarian
throne into a permanency unexpected in any of
the European Chancelleries.

Ferdinand was aided in his scheme of govern-
ing Bulgaria by the very mixed state of the
political parties in that country. Of these parties
there are no less than ten, a circumstance which
in itself is most favourable to the underhand
methods which are a second nature to the man
who calls himself the Czar of the Bulgarians.
But the foreign policy of this parvenu principality
involved the exercise of an immensity of tact and
discretion, and Ferdinand found the experience,

FEEDINAOTD THE HXUST 189

the ability and the connexions of his mother
more than invaluable ; they were indispensable.

It must be said for him that he followed im-
plicitly the instructions of this counsellor in petti-
coats, even in the matter of his marriage. She
enabled him to play off the influence of Eussia
against the growing pretensions of Austria, and
to keep Bulgaria in a position to benefit, whatever
the differences between the pair might be.

But princesses cannot live for ever, not even
such fine and wise old ladies as the Princess
Clementine. In 1907 she died, and among the
many mourners who gathered at her graveside
there was no one who had such good cause to regret
her loss as the son whom she had put on a throne,
and kept there in the face of the most discouraging
circumstances.

Just at this time there was a new and potent
influence making itself felt in Austria. The
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne,
had recovered all the influence he had lost by
his chivalrous adherence to his morganatic bride.
She too, by the exercise of the wonderful qualities
that had won her the whole-souled love of this
remarkable man, had gained the admiration and
esteem of the aged Emperor. The influence of the
heir to the throne ran through all the affairs of
Austria, and it was Ferdinand's lot to come under
that powerful influence at the very time when he

190 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

was deprived of his loving and long-tried adviser,
the woman who had shaped his life to success.

Austria to-day remains the sole Power of
Europe where the old order still reigns. But in
the year 1907 the old Emperor, and the Council
chamber where he presided, was swayed by the
most remarkable exemplar of the new order that
Europe then knew. Abler than the Kaiser, and
equally as ambitious and unscrupulous politically,
Franz Ferdinand had formed schemes for the
aggrandisement of Austria equally as far-reaching
as those which William had initiated for the
expansion of Germany.

While the Kaiser was dreaming of world
politics, the Archduke was maturing schemes to
turn the Adriatic into an Austrian lake. They
included the disappearance of such States as
Serbia and Montenegro, and threatened in the
same way the existence of Bulgaria. The ex-
tinction of the dual kingdoms in the Austro-
Hungarian Empire, and the creation of a military
and naval power equal in might to Germany
itself, were all parts of the ambitious design of
this man.

His silent power, the mysterious but pervading
influence he exercised in all parts of the Austrian
Empire, his rapid marshalling of all the ablest men
of the country to his side, deeply impressed Fer-
dinand, who was in the closest touch with Austrian

FEEDINAND THE HUN 191

affairs. His visits to Vienna became more fre-
quent, and the Count de Murany and Franz
Ferdinand spent much time together.

At this time Ferdinand decided to marry once
more, and as his mother was no longer there to
control his choice, it fell upon a German bride,
who was of the Lutheran faith. The Princess
Eleonore of Eeuss-Koestritz was worthy of a
better man than Ferdinand of Bulgaria. At this
time she was nearly fifty years of age, and her
most memorable exploit had been her devoted
service to the Eussian wounded in the war with
Japan. That service to humanity she has since
amplified by Eed Cross work among the wounded
Bulgarians that entitles her to the respect and
admiration of the whole world.

Her brother. Prince Henry of Eeuss, had been
one among the many princes to whom the Bul-
garian throne had been offered in vain before that
scene in an Austrian beer garden took place, as
related in the opening chapter of this narrative.
The connexion was very valuable to Ferdinand ;
in fact, it was a proof of his rise in life that such a
house and such a Princess would condescend to
him.

But the religious question again rose to trouble
the Bulgarian Prince. He was himself a Catholic ;
the State religion of Bulgaria was the Orthodox
Church, and the bride was a Lutheran. So he

192 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

devised no less than three wedding ceremonies.
The first was a " civil " ceremony, which took
place at Gera, the capital of the State of Eeuss.
Then the pair went off to Coburg, where they
were married according to the rites of the Eoman
Catholic Church in the Cathedral of St. Augustine.
A return to Gera was necessary for the Lutheran
ceremony in the Chapel of Osterstein castle.
Then, at last, Ferdinand considered himself well
and truly married.

But once more he was in trouble with the Pope,
Pius X, who succeeded that Leo XIII who gave
him such a dressing down for the apostasy of his
infant heir. This Pope would have nothing to
do with him, and it was said in the best informed
circles was preparing an edict of excommunication
for his continued impiety, culminating in this
marriage with a Protestant. But Ferdinand
was now to reap the benefit of his friendship with
Franz Ferdinand ; the heir to the Austrian Em-
pire interceded for him, and the blow was averted.

When Ferdinand took his German bride to
Sofia, he was again received with hoots and yells of
" Schwaba," but he did not care. It is only
right to say that the greeting was not aimed at
the lady, whom the Bulgarians soon took into their
favour. She has since been a good mother to the
Bulgarian Eoyal children, and a kind and humane
queen to the suffering soldiers of Bulgaria.

FEEDINAND THE HUN 193

But the satisfaction of Ferdinand was not due
to any anticipation of these things. What pleased
him was that at last he was invited to Schonbrun
to meet the old Austrian Emperor. The attitude
of Francis Joseph had always been such as to
make Ferdinand repeat the anxious question
of Mr. Dick Swiveller, when a meeting was in
question. " Is the Old Min friendly f " he
might well have asked when the invitation was
conveyed to him by Franz Ferdinand. For the
aged Emperor had called him a " felon " and
other uncomplimentary things, and sternly refused
to have anything to do with him. Small wonder
if Ferdinand was anxious about his reception.

But he took his bride to Schonbrun, and the
influence of the Austrian heir was shown by the
fact that the *' Old Min " was indeed friendly.
He toasted Ferdinand and his bride in glowing
terms that created a mild sensation throughout
Europe. This Ferdinand was pleased, in a sub-
sequent interview, to attribute to his own great
merits. " The welcome accorded me by the Em-
peror Francis Joseph, and his cordial toast," he
said, " were, I venture to say, the deserved reward
of the work which I had in more than twenty
years accomplished in Bulgaria. They were in no
degree the declaration of any compact." Ferdin-
and has always been a good denier.

It was a great stroke for Ferdinand. A little

N

194 FEEDINAKD OF BULGAEIA

while afterwards Standoff, his Foreign Minister,
was able to boast with truth in the Sobranje that —

" Honours generally reserved for independent
sovereigns are now rendered to the Prince of
Bulgaria. The Great Powers are represented
here by their ministers plenipotentiary. While
our army is esteemed abroad, its Commander-in-
Chief (the Prince) holds honorary rank in the
armies of foreign States. Our Government is
faithful to its international engagements, and is
desirous of developing intercourse with other
peoples." And so on. And all the time Ferdinand
was the vassal of the Sultan of Turkey.

But not for much longer. For now the Young
Turks rose and tore the Eed Sultan from the
throne, and Ferdinand was able to give a practical
demonstration of the meaning of the strange
friendliness of the " Old Min."

FERDINAND THE CZAR

" With pride and thanksgiving I accept the title of Bul-
garian Czar offered me by the nation and the Oovemment." —
Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

CHAPTEE XIX
FERDINAND THE CZAR

THE Young Turk revolution could only have
been viewed by Ferdinand, and by his
master, Franz Ferdinand, as a serious blow to
their schemes of aggrandisement in the Balkans.
Their whole pretext for interference was supplied
by the oppression of the Christian nations in
Thrace, Macedonia and Albania by the minions of
the Eed Sultan. And now the Bed Sultan was no
more a Sultan, and the new Sultan was put into
power with the mission of remedying the griev-
ances of these Christian subjects of Turkey.

Ferdinand was still a vassal Prince, and by the
terms of the Treaty of Berlin bound to remain a
vassal Prince. The Provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, by the terms of the same treaty,
only existed under the protection of the Austrian
Empire. If the new Turkish administration
should prove honest and successful, the schemers

197

198 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

would be hard put to it for an excuse for the
interference they had planned.

But excuses are easily found by men like
Ferdinand of Bulgaria. The new Turkish Minis-
try gave a dinner in Constantinople to the repre-
sentatives of the Great Powers. Naturally they
left out M. Gueschoff, the Bulgarian political
Agent in Constantinople, who was nothing but
the servant of Turkey's own vassal. But Fer-
dinand took offence at this slight, and seizing a
section of the Orient Express railway, promptly
proclaimed Bulgaria's independence of Turkey.

In the same moment Austria took possession
in full of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina,
and the breach of the Treaty of Berlin thus became
a huge one. The full nature of the plot was re-
vealed when Germany, which was bound like all the
other Powers signing the treaty to insist on its
observance, backed the position of Austria and
Bulgaria. In the words of the Kaiser, Germany
stood by "in shining armour." The prospect of
a world struggle, since realized, was afforded to a
startled civilization. But it was averted, and the
schemers carried out their plan successfully.

On October 5, 1908, Ferdinand rode into the
ancient Bulgarian capital of Tirnovo, incidentally
falling off his horse in the process, and was
crowned Czar of Bulgaria, the regalia to which
allusion has been made in the course of this

The poorest of royal horsemen, Ferdinand enters Sofia
as Czar for the first time, with two men at the head
of his horse for the purpose of controlling it.

[To face page 198.

FBEDINAND THE CZAR 199

narrative having been taken out of pawn and
furbished up for the occasion. The happy
peasantry danced the national dances once more,
and the streets of the city afforded a spectacle
seldom seen off the stage of the luxurious musical
comedy theatres of the pre-war era.

The Coronation ceremony took place in the
Church of the Forty Martyrs, and afterwards
Ferdinand walked to the Hissar, or castle of the
old Czars of Bulgaria. No more perilous riding
for him that day ! And there, in the hall where
Czar Simeon and the rest of them used to feast —
and plan to gouge out the eyes of the Byzantine
Greeks — he read the following bombastic pro-
clamation : —

" By the will of our never-to-be-forgotten
Liberator and the great kindred Eussian nation,
aided by our good friends and neighbours the
subjects of the King of Eumania, by the Bul-
garian heroes on February 18, 1878, chains of
slavery were broken by which for so many cen-
turies Bulgaria, once a great and glorious Power,
was bound. From that time till to-day, for full
thirty years, the Bulgarian nation, preserving
the memory of those who had laboured for its
freedom and inspired by their tradition, has
worked incessantly for the development of its
beautiful country, and under my guidance and that
of the departed Prince Alexander, has made it a

200 PEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

nation fit to take an equal place in the family of
civilized peoples, and endowed with gifts of cul-
tural and economic progress.

" While proceeding on this path nothing should
arrest the progress of Bulgaria, nothing should
hinder her success. Such is the desire of the
nation, such its will.

" Let that desire be fulfilled ! The Bulgarian
nation and its chief can have but one sentiment,
one desire.

" Practically independent, the nation was im-
peded in its normal and peaceful development by
certain illusions and formal limitations, which
resulted in a coldness of relations between Turkey
and Bulgaria. I and the nation desire to rejoice
in the political development of Turkey. Turkey
and Bulgaria, free and independent of each other,
may exist under conditions which will allow them
to strengthen their friendly relations and to
devote themselves to peaceful internal develop-
ment.

" Inspired by the sacred purpose of satisfying
national requirements and fulfilling the national
desire, I proclaim, with the blessing of the
Almighty, Bulgaria — united since September 6,
1885 — an independent kingdom. Together with
the nation I firmly believe that this act will meet
with the approbation of the Great Powers."

Then Ferdinand gave the signal and the beauty

PEEDINAND THE CZAE 201

chorus obliged once more with the national
dances. At last he was Czar of the Bulgarians.

It must have been disheartening to such a whole-
souled friend of liberty and progress to find
" the great kindred Eussian nation " was very-
angry at his duplicity, and accused him of an
arrangement with Austria. This he denied most
emphatically, as I have told, and in an amazing
Press interview explained what a misunderstood
man he was. He said : —

" The mission which I am fulfilling here in
the Balkans must be thoroughly understood.
I have devoted myself entirely to the people
which I adopted twenty- two years ago. It
possesses wonderful virtues. It is sober, hard-
working, proud, jealous of its independence and
freedom. A nation from which is recruited the
admirable and large army that you have seen,
and which cheerfully bears the military burdens
imposed upon it by necessity, is one of the strong
nations, with a fine future before it.

" But the Bulgarian, after so many years of
servitude, barely liberated as he is from the
Mussulman yoke, still remains concentrated in
himself. He has not learned to look outside his
country. All his universe is contained between
his mountains, the Black Sea, and the Danube.
It is I who do duty for him as the watchman,
who is incessantly scanning the distant horizon.

202 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

It is I who pick up for him rumours from abroad,
who communicate his aspirations, his desires,
and legitimate claims to the foreigner. I am
like the lung which breathes the outside air for
him, and which assimilates for him the refreshing
breezes which come from the rest of the world-
Owing, above all, to its Sovereign, Bulgaria does
not remain isolated and shut up in herself, and
she constitutes a portion of the European family."

This was Ferdinand's way of conveying to the
Liberator nation of Eussia that, having got all he
could expect from that source, he had taken up
with new friends. The Watchman " scanning
the distant horizon " had discerned the effort
that the German nations were preparing to snatch
the mastery of Europe, and had thrown in the lot
of the people he had so kindly adopted with the
pirates. But Eussia, then and for long after-
wards, was unable to believe that his perfidy was
as complete as recent events have proved it.

Russia continued to exert itself for the freedom
of the Slav peoples from the Turk ; for the Young
Turk proved to be still the same old Turk, and the
bitter cry of Macedonia was not stilled by the
departure of Abdul the Damned into exile.

The theft of Bosnia and Herzegovina had
brought the Austrians right down on to the
border of poor little Serbia, which needed imme-
diate protection from the ambitious schemes of

FEEDINAND THE CZAE 203

the heir to the throne, as much as the Serbians
outside Serbia itself needed help against the per-
secuting Turk. In such circumstances it was the
task of Eussia to unite the Balkan nations by a
treaty which would make them mutually de-
fensive against their foes, and it was such a
treaty that Ferdinand was presently called upon
by his Ministers to sign.

FERDINAND AND THE BALKAN
LEAGUE

" May Ood preserve Bulgaria from the consequences.'" —
Ferdinand of Bulgabia.

CHAPTEE XX

FERDINAND AND THE BALKAN
LEAGUE

THE independent kingdom of Bulgaria occu-
pied a very different position in the eyes
of the Powers to that of the vassal Principality.
Soon Ferdinand began to feel some of the dis-
advantages of greatness, and to recognize the
responsibilities he had incurred by his coup with
Austria. He had incurred the suspicion of Eussia
and Eumania on the one side, and the enmity of
Serbia on the other, while Turkey was only biding
its time to avenge his share in the breaking of the
Berlin Treaty.

The new regime in Turkey was no better than
the old, and the atrocities in Macedonia continued,
Bulgarian and Turkish bands vying with one
another in cruelty and oppression. Eussia's
remedy for this state of things was a league of the
Balkan States for mutual defence, and eventually
all except Eumania were induced to come to an

207

208 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

agreement. In this agreement the protecting
hand of Eussia obtained for Serbia a measure of
protection from Austria equivalent to that
guaranteed to Bulgaria against the vengeful Turk.

Thus in the treaty between Serbia and Bulgaria
it was agreed that for purposes of mutual defence
Bulgaria must put into the field at least 200,000
men, and Serbia not less than 150,000. Article
3 of the military convention between these two
nations stipulated " If Austria-Hungary attacks
Serbia or sends her army into the Sandjak of Novi-
Bazar, Bulgaria engages herself to declare war
upon Austria at once, and to send into Serbia an
army which shall not be less than 200,000 soldiers
strong, and which, in association with the Serbian
army, shall engage in offensive and defensive
operations against Austria-Hungary."

Now Ferdinand wanted an alliance against
Turkey, but not an alliance against Austria.
When this treaty was presented to him by his
Ministers for signature he demurred, and sent it
back for the deletion of the offending clause.
But Eussia was firm, and threatened to withdraw
her support of the alliance unless the clause pro-
tecting Serbia against Austria were included.
Then Ferdinand signed ; and throwing down the
pen dramatically exclaimed —

" May God preserve Bulgaria from the con-
sequences ! "

THE BALKAN LEAGUE 209

The treaty was signed on February 29, 1912.

Then Ferdinand prepared his coup against
Turkey without further loss of time. The pretext
for the mobilization of the Bulgarian army,
which was ordered on October 5, 1912, was the
"massacre" of Kochana, a town in Macedonia,
close to the Bulgarian border. It began with a
bomb explosion contrived by Ferdinand's own
emissaries, and followed with reprisals on both
sides.

Then Ferdinand ordered the mobilization of
the army, and issued a proclamation in his very
best style. Here are some extracts : —

" The tears of the Balkan slave and the groan-
ing of millions of Christians could not but stir our
hearts, the hearts of their kinsmen and co-
religionists, who are indebted for our peaceful
life to a great Christian Liberator, and the Bul-
garian nation has often remembered the pro-
phetic words of the Czar Liberator, ' The work
is begun, it must be carried through.'

" I bring to the cognisance of the Bulgarian
nation that war is declared. I order the brave
Bulgarian army to march on the Turkish terri-
tory ; at our sides, and with us will fight, for the
same object against a common enemy, the armies
of the Balkan States allied to Bulgaria — Serbia,
Greece and Montenegro. And in this struggle of
the Cross against the Crescent, of liberty against

o

210 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

tyranny, we shall have the sympathy of all those
who love justice and progress. . . . Forward,
may God be with you."

Then they danced the national dances and sang
the national songs in the streets of Sofia, and
carefully rehearsed shouts were raised of " Long
live our heroic Czar ! "

It is not within the compass of this narrative to
enter into the details of the first Balkan war.
The Bulgarian army fought as might have been
expected, with a savage bravery. The behaviour
of its soldiery eclipsed the worst exploits of the
Huns in Belgium. These peasants were only one
generation more advanced in civilization than
the eye-gouging heroes of the old Czars, and
nothing could restrain them.

They beat the Turks at Kirk Kilisse and Lule
Burgas, and pursued the flying enemy, by Fer-
dinand's order, to the very lines of Chatalja. They
laid siege to Adrianople, and had he not interfered,
would have soon entered that city and butchered
the bulk of its Turkish inhabitants. But Fer-
dinand preferred to be away at Carlsbad when any
butchery was going on, and interfered, so that the
capture of the city was delayed until a strong
Serbian force came on the scene, and hastened its
surrender.

The Greeks, as is well known, made straight for
Salonica, of which important port they took

THE BALKAN LEAGUE 211

possession. The Montenegrins did wonders on the
Adriatic coast, while the Serbians were equally-
successful in their sphere of the war ; and, as I
have said, helped to bring about the fall of
Adrianople.

But Ferdinand's attempt to force a way to Con-
stantinople failed, and the Bulgarian army got a
severe handling at the lines of Chatalja. On
November 1, Ferdinand had rejected a peace
proposal from Turkey, without communicating it
to his Allies ; but by the end of the year he was
trying to make peace with Turkey, again without
his Allies. The fall of Adrianople in March
brought to a head the disagreement of the
Allies about the division of the conquered terri-
tory.

Then, according to the treaties which bound the
Balkan States, the differences should have been
referred to Eussia for arbitration. The clause of
the treaties which imposed this condition is
worth quoting : —

" Every difference which may be manifested
concerning the interpretation and execution of
any of the stipulations of the treaty, its secret
annex, or military conventions, is to be sub-
mitted to the final decision of Eussia as soon as
one or other party declares that it is impossible to
reach an agreement with the other party by direct
negotiation."

212 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

But a reference of his claims to Eussia was the
last thing Ferdinand wanted. His hesitation at
signing the clause protecting Serbia against
Austria had not won him the confidence of Eussia,
and he feared that he would not have anything
the best of such arbitration. Serbia was now
seeking an outlet to the Adriatic, as the reward for
her share in the fighting, and this ambition was
opposed to all Austrian interests. Ferdinand
again began to intrigue with Austria, and to
palter with Eussia and his allies. He dismissed
his pacific Prime Minister, M. Gueschoff, and
ordered Dr. Daneff to form a ministry. That
ministry resisted arbitration by every means in its
power.

Meanwhile Ferdinand was preparing for a
treacherous attack upon the forces of his Allies.
The Bulgarian armies were concentrated upon the
Macedonian borders, and secret preparations of
great elaboration were pushed forward.

At midnight on June 29, the Serbians and
Greeks along the entire front were suddenly and
violently attacked. As they had not expected this
act of treachery, they were driven back in wild
confusion. But they soon rallied, and at the same
time Bulgaria had to submit to an invasion from
the fresh troops of Eumania. Turkey again
moved forward, and the Bulgarians found them-
selves unable to resist the combination of enemies

THE BALKAN LEAGUE 213

against them. Ferdinand was forced to sign the
disadvantageous Treaty of Bucarest.

Thus Ferdinand's treachery met its due reward.
What it cost Bulgaria at the time will now be
related. What it will eventually cost Bulgaria
cannot yet be detailed, but it is certain that the
peasant State has not yet paid a tithe of the price
of ranging itself on the side of the Huns.

FERDINAND THE MARTYR

" If Ood and my foes grant me life, we shall go on, and my
children, my successors, will follow the road on which I have
been the pioneer.'' — ^Ferdinand or Bulgabia.

CHAPTEE XXI
FERDINAND THE MARTYR

THE Treaty of Bucarest was followed in
Bulgaria by what Ferdinand, in an inter-
view with a British newspaper correspondent,
pathetically described as a " schemozzle." Yon
may remember that among his many accomplish-
ments a facile use of Yiddish speech takes high
rank.

And really, considering how furiously the
Bulgarians had fought, and how freely they shed
their blood, it is not surprising that they were
angry with him. All their neighbours had got
something substantial, even Eumania, which
had not taken up arms against the Turks. And
Bulgaria was the poorer by a substantial slice
of territory extorted from Ferdinand by his
Eumanian neighbours. The Turks had regained
possession of Macedonia, including the city of
Adrianople. The Greeks had the coveted ports

217

218 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

of Salonica and Kavalla on the ^gean. Tlie
Serbians, though they had not found their way-
out to the Adriatic, had Thrace, and a long
railway line from Belgrade through Uskub, with
an outlet through Greek territory to Salonica.

Each of the ten Bulgarian political parties
blamed one of the leaders of another party, but
all united in giving chief part of the blame to
Ferdinand himself. And in this, there can be
no doubt, they were quite right.

Ferdinand himself was indeed in a bad way.
He had offended Eussia beyond all chance of
recovery in her good graces. He had lost every
trick in the game, and his dreams of being crowned
in Constantinople had melted into thin air. In
his extremity he turned to his Austrian friends
for sympathy. It was characteristic of him that
he should go off to Vienna disguised as the Count
of Murany. He went for advice and sympathy
to his friend Franz Ferdinand. But this astute
person refused to see him. Moreover, the semi-
ofiScial Press of Vienna came out with a demand
that Ferdinand should be required to leave the
Austrian capital. He was, they said, a dangerous
and undesirable visitor. So Ferdinand went
quietly back to Sofia, taking with him a sheaf of
Press cuttings to prove, at any rate, that the
Austrians were no friends of his.

There were no national dances to welcome him

FEEDINAND THE MAETYR"' 219

home. Instead a crowd assembled mider the
Palace windows and moaned, " Down with the
Balkan Nero." And the students had got a pot
of tar and a big brush and scrawled on the Palace
walls, in letters two feet long, " To Let."

The students had reason to be angry with
him. He had never really liked the students of
Sofia, and when the attack on his Allies was made,
he had arranged that a regiment, mainly com-
posed of students and other advanced thinkers,
young men of position in Bulgaria, should be
placed in a position without support where they
were sure to be badly cut up. This had leaked
out, and Ferdinand was more unpopular than
ever with the youth and intellect of Sofia.
" Down with the Balkan Nero," they cried ; and
Ferdinand shuddered to hear them.

Then it was announced that the King was
about to abdicate in favour of Prince Boris. The
latter had borne himself gallantly in the war,
and was popular, compared to his father. The
rumour of his impending resignation made things
easier for Ferdinand, and he did not deny that
rumour. He posed as a martyr and a victim of
Eussian intrigue. And the curious part of it is
that he got people to believe him, and especially
English people.

Ferdinand has always been very polite to
foreign journalists, and in his hour of need this

220 FEEDINAND OP BULGAEIA

facile courtesy served him well. By this time
few people in this country knew what all the
fighting was about, or whether Greece, Serbia,
Bulgaria or Eumania was in the wrong about
the second Balkan war. What they did know
was that the Bulgarians had administered the
principal trouncings to the Turk, and had come
out of the struggle worse off than when they
entered.

On broad principles it was considered that
Ferdinand had been most unfairly treated. The
theory that the Balkan States should be limited
by racial conditions has also prevailed in this
country, among such people as were interested
enough to give the matter a single thought. It
is an excellent theory but for the fact that the
average Macedonian peasant prefers to belong
to the race which has the strongest band of mur-
derers in the neighbourhood.

In any case, Ferdinand, who had a keen nose
for sympathy, saw that his treachery could be
covered by a sufficient amount of brazen com-
plaining and posing. If he ever had any thought
of abdicating he quickly laid it aside. He was
quick to recognize that the worst that could
possibly happen to him had already happened,
and that the Great Powers would see that Bul-
garia was shorn of no more territory. He set
diligently to work to obscure the real facts of the

FERDINAND THE MARTYR 221

second Balkan war ; he has been obscuring them
ever since.

At home he fomented disputes among the
party politicians, and managed to switch them
on to a discussion about which the Bulgarians
have written whole libraries of books. He did not
care who or what they blamed ; let them only
keep on arguing and their fury would spend itself
in words. He was right ; they continued to argue
about the events of June, 1913, until they had
something more cogent to engage their attention .

Meanwhile Ferdinand returned to the simple
life. He found in his old hobbies of botany
and ornithology a new charm ; they took him
much into the country and out of the cries of the
enraged students. He added a new hobby, and
interested himself much in animals. Soon an
interested world was informed that he was
spending his leisure in taming elephants.

The pro-German party in Bulgaria wished
him to strive with his Austrian and German
friends for a revision of the Treaty of Bucarest.
Our own authorities on Balkan questions openly
proclaimed that unless that were done, there
was nothing that could save his crown for Fer-
dinand. The Sofiote Press began to publish
stories of Prince Boris, showing what a hero he
was, and how well fitted to rule in place of his
unworthy father.

222 FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

But if Ferdinand knows nothing else, he knows
how to wait. He had waited many years for
the chance of a Principality. He waited ages
to bring about the downfall of Stambuloff. He
waited even longer for the recognition by the
Powers of Europe of his claim to be considered
Prince of Bulgaria ; and he waited nearly a
quarter of a century to declare himself Czar of
Bulgaria and independent of Turkey. None
knows better than he the virtue of masterly
inaction.

From the haven of Euxinograd — " My San-
dringham," as he used to call it when speaking
to British visitors — he followed with interest
the storm that was raging in Sofia. He cultivated
sedulously every influence that was opposed to
his old friends and supporters, and threw all his
weight into the growing friendship arising be-
tween Bulgaria and Turkey, the two sufferers
from the Balkan wars. His plans were simple
enough ; he wished to promote revolutionary
outbreaks in Serbian Thrace, and to foster the
Austrian influence in Sofia.

But he acted throughout by means of agents.
Ostensibly he was living the simple life, and posing
as an injured and misunderstood monarch. The
fierce winds of controversy in Sofia in which he
was made a target by all the controversialists
did not blow upon him. He could see the storm-

FEEDINAND THE MAETYR 223

clouds thickening in the Balkans, and spent
more and more time on his throne seat on the
seashore, looking out to Constantinople.

And while lie was living the simple home life
at Euxinograd, the storm at Sofia actually did
blow itself out ; and the great European storm
burst and carried away all the fastenings of
civilization.

But first it will be amusing and instructive to
take a peep at him as the simple farmer and
flower-lover, living the family life far away from
the cares of State and the troubles which afflict
a monarch who means to be crowned in the
cathedral of St. Sophia at Constantinople.

FERDINAND IN RETIREMENT

" His disappearances correspond to the most secret depths
of his soul." — Alexandre Hepp.

CHAPTER XXII
FERDINAND IN RETIREMENT

ONCE, in the days when Ferdinand was a
sub-lieutenant of Austrian hussars, the
Emperor Franz Joseph stood talking to Kossuth,
the Hungarian statesman, at the window of the
palace. As they talked Ferdinand chanced to
pass through the courtyard below, and the Em-
peror asked the Hungarian his opinion of the
young prince.

" That boy, sire," said Kossuth, " has a long
nose, but it will not be you who will pull it."

The prophecy may or may not prove an
accurate one, but the personal observation was
inevitable. No one can possibly look at Ferdinand
without being struck by the size and prominence
of his nose. " Too copious for one man," it
has been pronounced, and in the modern gallery
of kings there is certainly no nose like it.

For the rest, the Prince Ferdinand who first

227

228 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

affronted the eyes of the rough Bulgarians was
an exquisite, with artificially waved and golden
locks, white hands with long slim fingers, a
small waist confined by obvious corsets, and
cold blue eyes that sparkled with self-esteem.

A quarter of a century has not served to modify
the dominance of his all-pervading nose, though
it has altered the rest of the man in no small
degree. The long fair moustache and the deli-
cately tended imperial have given way to a thick
crop of grey hair, and a carefully trimmed and
pointed beard. His pinched figure has expanded
into a burly stoutness, his fine hands have gone
plump and coarse ; he is no longer the " Prince
Charming" of the adventure of 1887; although
he still preserves his personal vanity — for not
long ago he had a journalist sent to gaol for
nothing more than making some rude remarks
about the length of his nose. The Ferdinand
we are now to see surrounded by his home
influences is a man who affects the manner of a
bluff country gentleman.

Of course it is not possible to speak with any
confidence of the manner of a man so entirely
artificial as Ferdinand. He has a separate
manner for every occasion and for every person
with whom he comes into contact. As we have
seen, his manner to the Sofiotes is ever one of
aloof and portentous gravity. This pose of the

Ferdinand allows the peasants to kiss his hand.

ITo face page 229.

FERDINAND IN BETIBEMENT 229

monarch absorbed in the affairs of State is not
an original one. It is copied from the Kaiser,
who has for many years taken the utmost
pains to avoid smiling in public. Not long ago
a photographer, to whom the Kaiser was posing,
startled him into a smile by the imperious manner
of his instructions. All the prints made and
the negative itself had to be destroyed.

The same pose of a man immersed in matters
of superhuman importance has suited Ferdinand
very well in Sofia, and I have shown that it has
served very well to impress the people of that
city. But when he was under a cloud, and
forced to remain entirely at his country palaces,
one found him doing the heavy benevolent father
of his people, with the unfortunate Bulgarian
peasants as his victims.

The two palaces between which he divided his
time were that of Vrana, a suburb of Sofia where
he has an estate at the foot of Mount Vitosch,
and Euxinograd, the " Sandringham " he main-
tains on the border of the Black Sea, which was
recently shelled with good effect by the Russian
fleet.

Here you might have seen Ferdinand, gotten
up in a shooting suit, with gaiters, thick leather
gloves and a heavy stick, walking about the
farms of the peasants and prodding the cattle
in the ribs with a knowing air. Nice clean old

230 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

peasant women were kept always at hand, to
kiss Ms finger graciously extended to them, and
to impress any foreign visitor with the urbanity of
this monarch, and the good terms on which he
existed with the simple country folk.
Let me quote his English biographer: —
" For the country people the King was a gentle-
man farmer, knowing everything about agricul-
ture, tobacco-growing, wine-growing, the state
of the markets, and most pleasant to gossip with.
Every village on the railway line or country road
along which the King was coming would turn
out its crowd of people to salute him. In an
automobile journey he would stop to watch or
chat with labourers at work in the fields, or at
some hamlet where the teacher took care to have
his young folk lined up in front of their seniors.
A pathetic love for childhood is one of the dis-
tinctive traits of Czar Ferdinand's character."

One of Ferdinand's own stories is of a vil-
lage teacher whom he met under such circum-
stances, and whom he graciously invited to come
and see him if ever he visited Sofia. There
was a grand levee at the palace, the story goes,
and everybody was attired for the most formal
of Ferdinand's formal evenings. When the
revelry was at its height, a rough man in baggy
brown trousers and a country coat came to the
door and asked to see the King. He was promptly

FEEDINAND IN EETIEEMENT 231

told to go away. But he refused, and said he had
been invited. Then a squabble took place, the
rustic insisting on being allowed an entry.

In the midst of the trouble the King put in an
appearance and cordially greeted his visitor.
Shaking him heartily by the hand he led him
through the brilliant throng to his study where
he gave him refreshment. Then he conducted
him about the palace, introducing him to this
one and that.

That is a story that Sofia scoffs at, and that is
believed by bucolic Bulgaria. And ninety per
cent, of the Bulgarians are essentially bucolic.

Ferdinand takes the interest in his family that
might have been expected of such a man. He
has insisted that each of his four children shall
have a hobby, and is more than a little proud
of the electric bells which Prince Cyril has in-
stalled in the Vrana Palace. He alleges that
this feat proves that the younger of his sons has
a great mechanical genius, in which he takes
after his father, who can drive a locomotive to
perfection. It is an established theory, therefore,
that eventually Prince Cyril shall succeed his
father as Lord High Admiral of the handful of
torpedo craft which constitute the Bulgarian
fleet.

The Princesses have been taken in hand by the
Czarina, and have effectually seconded her in the

232 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

works of mercy that have so occupied her leisure
of recent years. Both are pretty girls resembling
their gentle mother rather than Ferdinand ; in-
deed, there is little resemblance shown to the
Balkan Czar by any of his family.

Ferdinand also goes in for sport in a mild sort
of way. One cannot expect many such remark-
able feats as the " valorous " shot that brought
down the eagle which he has had stuffed and
mounted in his den. But he does considerable
execution among the little birds along the sea-
shore, when the dare-devil fit comes upon him.
He has also a rooted antipathy to owls, and will
go to the utmost trouble to put one of these
birds out of action.

The reason is a superstitious one. He declares
that when any misfortune is about to overtake
him, warning is given by the circumstance of an
owl settling on the flagstaff of his Euxinograd
Palace. The fewer owls, of course, the less oppor-
tunity of giving warnings, and so the less likelihood
of misfortune overtaking the Balkan Czar. It
is a fine piece of reasoning, which involves its
originator in conduct which in a man less kind-
hearted might almost be accounted as cruelty.

But he makes up for his harshness to owls by a
great tenderness to birds that have bright plumage
or sing sweetly. To all such the Euxinograd
estate is a sanctuary, and is consequently the

FEEDINAND IN EETIEEMENT 233

resort of feathered visitors from the whole coun-
try around. They, and the beautiful collection
of caged birds which he maintains, form another
interest to his life at this retreat.

And so, amid his tame peasants and tame birds
in the seclusion of his beautiful gardens, Ferdinand
waited for the home storm to blow over, and for
the storm to rise without his kingdom. We under-
stand now that he knew as well as anyone what
was preparing, for he was deep in the councils of
his friend Franz Ferdinand, and not without an
inkling of what was in the mind of his friend's
friend, the Kaiser. The scheme of these two
dark-minded men to attack Eussia through Serbia
was now in course of execution.

Ferdinand was still leading the simple life when
the world was startled and horrified by the
assassination of Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo.
Who can say where the guilt of that bloody act
really lies ? Its effect can be discerned by the
most superficial observer. While Franz Fer-
dinand lived there was in Austria a rival to
the Kaiser in intellect, in force of character, in
the art of concentrating national effort to the
furtherance of his ambitious schemes.

The murder of the heir to the Austrian throne
not only afforded a pretext for the attempt to
inflict German predominance upon the face of
Europe; it also removed from the path of Ger-

234 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

many the one man who could have prevented
Austria from sinking to the position of Germany's
vassal.

When the murder was done, Ferdinand, as if
by a preconceived signal, returned from his
retirement to actual life. He was now prepared
to embark upon his last and greatest treachery,
to put into execution schemes so devious and so
dishonourable that all the perfidy of his early
career sinks into insignificance. His part in the
drama of 1914 was set and rehearsed ; he now
appeared on the stage, taking his cue with a
promptitude that speaks volumes for the thorough-
ness with which he had been rehearsed.

FERDINAND THE FALSE

" Bulgaria is the final link in th chain of German KvUur
and German greatness.'" — The Kaiskr.

CHAPTEE XXIII
FERDINAND THE FALSE

THE murder of Franz Ferdinand and the
ranging of all the Great Powers of Europe
in a struggle for life or death opened up to Fer-
dinand a new vista of opportunity. He could
see at any rate that opportunities would soon
come his way to retrieve the losses of the second
Balkan war. When Turkey plunged headlong
into the quarrel, the opportunities of Bulgaria
were multiplied tenfold, and for the first time
in its existence this newest of European nations
occupied a position of great importance by reason
of its geographical position.

To appreciate to the full the real importance
of Bulgaria's position it is necessary to take a
glance at the map of Europe, as it appeared after
the Treaty of Bucarest, and before Europe was
convulsed by the Great War. One quick glance
will show that the only European country with
a frontier adjoining that of Turkey in Europe is

237

238 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Bulgaria, and that it lies like a wedge between
the territory of the Central Powers and that of
Turkey.

In a word, a hostile Bulgaria would cut Turkey
off from its allies of Germany and Austria ; a
neutral Bulgaria would make communication
most difficult ; while an allied Bulgaria would
permit free passage of goods and troops between
Berlin and Constantinople.

Ferdinand was quick to see the new importance
he had assumed in the struggle of the nations,
and eager to push his advantage to the utmost.
From the very outset he was wooed most assidu-
ously by his old friend Austria, and by Germany
through Austria. On the other hand his tradi-
tional friendship with France, and the deep
obligation of Bulgaria to Eussia and Great
Britain, caused the Allied Powers to regard the
position with some complacency. The hostility
of all the Balkan States to Turkey, and therefore
to the Teuton Powers, was assumed, though it
appears to have been recognized from the outset
that Ferdinand would set a price, even upon his
neutrality.

But Ferdinand was already committed to a
scheme which promised him far more than he
could expect from his French friends and their
allies. The service demanded was no small one,
for he had not only to appear in arms on behalf

FERDINAND THE FALSE 239

of the Central Powers when the appointed time
came, but before then he had to destroy the
trust of the other Balkan States in the justice
and the cause of the Entente Powers.

To this end it was necessary to retain the con-
fidence of France, Great Britain, and the Powers
allied to them. The task was no easy one, since
his duplicity was a matter of notoriety ; and
he had need to preserve a very specious air to
cover the real cunning of his plans. How far
he went in his double dealing it is not yet possible
to say ; but it is certain that he must have gone
to extreme lengths to win the confidence and
trust of the Entente diplomatists in the face of
the warnings that were showered upon them.

The demands he made as the price of his
friendship were for concessions at the expense
of his neighbours, Serbia and Greece. Serbia
was to yield 6,000 square miles of that part of
Thrace which was wrested from Turkey in the
Balkan war. The demand was an unconscion-
able one, for in the territory he wanted was a
considerable section of the railway that linked
Belgrade to Salonica, and formed the only outlet
that Serbia possessed to the sea. That link was
to be entrusted to the acknowledged enemy of
Serbia, the Czar of Bulgaria.

It is not very pleasant to reflect that Serbia
was forced to consent to this demand by her

240 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

allies. The use made by Germans of the incident,
and of the pressure that had to be applied to
Serbia, was a very deft one. Eumania and Greece
were told that they were mere pawns in the
game, and that the Powers of the Entente would
willingly sacrifice them to their own desire to
retain the friendship of Bulgaria.

Greece was soon to have a practical illustration
of the German argument, for Ferdinand, embold-
ened by his first diplomatic success, then de-
manded a strip of Greek territory on the ^gean,
including the Greek seaport of Kavalla. Greece
strenuously objected, but was told that she must
give way and that it was only due to Bulgaria.
" What did we tell you ? " whispered the Germans
in Greek ears, and were justified of their previous
insinuations.

It has never been disclosed whether Ferdinand
asked for instant delivery of this territory, or
whether the compliance with his demands was
followed on his part by the signing of a treaty
with the Entente Powers. It would have been
like the disregard Ferdinand had always shown
for " scraps of paper " if he had committed
Bulgaria to a pact which he had already broken
when it was signed. For at this time, when by
some means he had won the trust of the Entente
Powers, he had actually entered into treaty
obligations with their enemies.

FEEDINAND THE FALSE 241

Who can measure the duplicity of this man ?
It is certain that the trust reposed in him by
both sides was very great, and that in the end
he was certain to betray one or the other. That
he had already chosen to betray the Entente is
fairly certain, for already the expedition against
the Dardanelles had been launched, and he
well knew that its success would mean the total
extinction of his long-cherished scheme for ob-
taining possession of Constantinople.

With Germany and Austria, on the other hand,
he was dealing with Powers lavish of their pro-
mises. To them, and to Turkey also, a free
passage through Bulgaria had now become
vital. They were at a standstill in the western
area of war, and their great effort against Eussia
was now expending itself. The only outlet
offering was to the east and south, and to that
outlet the assistance of Bulgaria was imperative.
So Germany promised far more than the Entente
Powers could give, and Ferdinand sold himself
to the biggest bidder.

It was a dangerous game he played, for the suc-
cess of the attempt on the Dardanelles would
have made it impossible for him to carry out his
arrangement with his friends the Huns. The
failure of that enterprise, on the other hand,
allowed him to break his obligations to the
Entente Powers, after they had strained the

Q

242 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

loyalty of Serbia, Greece and Eumania, in trying
to meet his demands.

Such was the double treachery of which Fer-
dinand was guilty in 1914 and 1915. His
treaties with the Teuton Powers appear to have
been two. The first was made with Austria
in 1913, when he pledged himself to common
action against Serbia with that Power ; and so,
it may be, paved the way to the assassination
of the heir-apparent to the Austrian throne.
The other was made with Germany in July,
1915, when Ferdinand was guaranteed Thrace,
and a strip of Greek territory along the ^gean,
including the ports of Kavalla and Salonica.

In April of 1915 the Eumanian Minister at
Sofia warned his government that the agreement
had been made, and Eumania in its turn warned
the Entente Powers. Later Greece warned the
Entente of what was going on at least twice.
In the face of these warnings, the Entente Powers
continued to believe in Ferdinand. The Ser-
bians, who knew his villany, and were certain
that he was casting in his lot with their oppressors-
wished to take the bull by the horns and attack
Bulgaria while its powerful friends were fully
occupied with Eussia and on the western front.
They were restrained by the Entente Powers ;
otherwise they would have altered the whole
course of the war.

FEEDINAND THE FALSE 243

I repeat that the Entente must have had better
assurance than mere protestations from Ferdinand
to have trusted him so implicitly. His reputa-
tion and his past career were for any one to
read ; yet in face of all suspicious circumstances
he was trusted. M. Joseph Eeinach states that
when the documents of the negotiations are
published by the Entente Powers they will
constitute a record in baseness and treachery.
For my own part, I conceive that nothing less
than a treaty signed by Ferdinand and his ministers
will be brought forward in justification of the
latitude that was allowed to him.

The mobilization of the Bulgarian army was
finally ordered upon the flimsiest of pretexts, and
its concentration upon the Serbian frontier,
concurrently with the advance of the German
and Austrians upon the doomed kingdom, follows
inevitably. The rest is a matter of recent history,
still an incomplete chapter in the story of the
Great War.

One effect of Ferdinand's intervention was
to unite Constantinople with Berlin, and to make
the British evacuation of the peninsula of Galli-
poli a necessity. Thus the Czar of Bulgaria was
instrumental in striking the hardest blow at the
prestige of the British arms that has been in-
flicted in the memory of living man. He effected
it, not by prowess in the field, but by an act of

244 FEKDINAND OF BULGAEIA

base and shameless treachery, which involved
his turning his back upon all the nations which
he had extolled as liberating influences, to which
Bulgaria owed its very existence. It involved
him in an alliance with Turkey, the Power against
which he had been for a generation declaiming.
But it was a shrewd blow nevertheless, and it
will be the fault of Great Britain itself if the
punishment for it is not conceived on a similar
scale of magnitude.

It must not be supposed that Ferdinand stood
alone in Bulgaria in this act of dissimulation
and treachery. He acted in connivance with a
ministry which represented a very powerful pro-
Hun section of Bulgarian opinion. For by this
time a large section of Bulgaria, embittered by
the reverse of the second Balkan war, had re-
nounced its Slavonic sympathies, and had openly
pronounced for the Kultur of the Kaiser and
his generals and professors.

KULTUR IN BULGARIA

" A heroic struggle is being played out before us ; the healthy
and mighty German Kultur is fighting the rotten French
Culture which, being sentenced to death, endeavours to indvxie
all the other nations of Europe to join her." — Db. Petroff,

OF THE BULGABIAN UNIVERSITY.

CHAPTEE XXIV
KULTUR IN BULGARIA

THE tragedy of the second Balkan war had
bitten deep into the hearts of most Bul-
garians. As I have already related, the terrible
disaster which that war brought upon Bulgaria
produced a controversy which only died down
when the Bulgarian Army was once more mobil-
ized to fight for the Turk against the nation
which liberated Bulgaria from Turkish bondage.

In the course of that controversy the argument
was elaborated that by the Treaty of Bucarest
Bulgaria had liquidated its old debt to Russia,
and was free to turn and rend its whilom bene-
factor upon the first favourable occasion. As
Nikoff, one of the foremost controversialists, put
it:

" In 1878 Russia liberated 3,000,000 of our
population after having shed the blood of 150,000
of her sons. In the year 1913 Bulgaria liberated,
at great sacrifices also, 3,000,000 of her population

247

248 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

in Macedonia and Thrace, which Eussia took
and distributed among her new proteges, Eu-
mania, Serbia and Greece. And to-day Bulgaria
and Eussia are quits. We have paid all our debt
to Eussia. To-day we can say : We have secured
our own liberty by our own arms."

The argument is an ingenious one, but it quite
overlooks the point that the Bulgarian Czar,
and not Eussia, was the instrument of Bul-
garia's undoing. But the Bulgarians desired
to free themselves not only from the obligation
for their liberty, but from the claims of kinship
with Eussia. And here German Kultur came
to their aid by an elaborate demonstration that
they were not Slavs at all, but a predominant
semi-Teutonic and Tartar race which had organ-
ized the meek Slavs of 500 years ago into a
victorious nation, and had persisted long after
the Slav race that lived with them had perished.

For Slav unity this new Bulgarian school
therefore proposed to substitute the theory of
German Kultur. As Dr. Ghenadieff writes,
" Slavism is a fatal barrier to our national power
and enthusiasm. It is high time that we emerge
from that error and discontinue preaching that
falsehood."

And Dr. Petroff, of the Bulgarian University,
writes, " At this moment the culturally degener-
ated and outcast France has, in her struggle against

KULTUE IN BULGAEIA 249

the powerful German Kultur, barbaric and
idiotic Eussia for ber ally."

And the most celebrated of Bulgarian poets,
the Tartaro-Bulgar Kyril Christoff, sings a song
of vengeance against Ferdinand's France —

When — after our deeds — envy gathered

Five enemies before o\ir doors ;

When, one after another, the enemies plixndered us.

And the sacred deed was reduced to ashes —

Soulless and sold, O France, thou wast the first

To caluminate our martyred people !

Before our pain thy heart was not moved —

But thou didst spit in the face of the Crucifix !

Such a state of mind, of course, was diligently
fostered in Bulgaria by Austrians and Germans
alike. Soon there were accounts from credible
sources of the massing in Bulgaria of huge stores
of German munitions, and even of German uni-
forms. Some of these munitions were undoubt-
edly intended for the beleaguered Turk, and
Bulgaria became notorious for the ease with
which these warlike stores could be smuggled
through a neutral country. Indeed, so openly
was the passage made that the word smuggled
is wildly inappropriate.

At this period Bulgaria entertained a new
guest. Prince Henry of Eeuss. He had not
always been as friendly to his brother-in-law, the
Czar of Bulgaria, as that potentate considered com-
patible with his own dignity and peculiar merits.

260 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

But now he had to complain of no lack of friend-
liness on the part of the Lutheran Prince, or of his
royal master who had dispatched him to Sofia.

The Germans at this period were good cus-
tomers of Bulgaria. The wheat crop had been
a bountiful one, and never had the Bulgarian
farmers received such prices for their harvest.
They found that a European war spelled pros-
perity for them, though there were signs that the
garnering of the wheat would be followed by one
of those grim harvests with which Bulgaria has
recently been only too familiar.

Then German ofiBcers appeared in the streets
of Sofia in increasing numbers. They were
discernible everywhere, though they made as
little display as possible of their uniforms ; and
when a German officer appears in civil garb there
must be some deep reason for the self-denial.

The other signs of German Kultur in Bulgaria
were the persistent anti-Eussian campaigns
carried on by the chief newspapers, especially
the Government organs.

" If our national duty demands that we should
join ourselves to the enemies of the Eussian
policy," wrote Dr. Ghenadieff , /' it would be crim-
inal and treasonable were we to hesitate to do so
because of a souvenir of our liberation, or if,
following the example of the Bohemians, Poles,
Croatians, and other pure-blooded Slavs, we

KULTUR m BULGAEIA 251

delayed too long before turning our arms against
the Eussians. . . . May an end be finally put
to the question of Bulgarian gratitude toEussia."

Thus the corruption of Bulgaria went on.
German money, German officers, and German
arms were poured into the country. The sufferings
of Poland, devastated as the result of its fidelity
to Eussia, were magnified in the Bulgarian Press,
and the moral for Bulgarians was emphasized
with daily increasing vehemence.

Ferdinand's part in these proceedings was a
characteristic one. He undertook to conceal
from the Powers of the Entente the treachery
that was preparing, and of which he was the chief
instigator. At this period — the middle of August,
1915 — he wrote to a correspondent in Paris,
through his political secretary Dobrovitch: —

" The Eussians have recently sustained serious
defeats, but I am not of opinion that these will
affect the general situation. They now require
time to recuperate, and then, I hope, they will
be able to resume the offensive.

" Bulgaria maintains its neutrality. Will it
continue to do so ? I think not. But in any
case Bulgaria will not move until Greece and
Eumania have done so. The catastrophes of
the last war have taught us to be prudent, and
not to trust to promises.

" I have conveyed your messages to His Majesty

252 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

the King, who has been much touched by them,
and has charged me to convey his appreciation."

That letter was written a month after the
treaty with Germany had been signed. In the
middle of July the French Minister at Sofia was
secretly informed that Ferdinand had gone on
a visit to Berlin. He at once attempted to get
into touch with the King, and was informed that
he was not very well, and was resting at his
Vrana estate. He made persistent attempts to
communicate with Ferdinand by telephone, a
method always possible when Ferdinand was
professing to be more French than the French
themselves. His every attempt was met with
the reply that His Majesty was indisposed and
could not answer the calls.

Photographs have since been obtained which
prove beyond all doubt that Ferdinand was at
that time in Berlin, where he had gone to con-
firm with the Kaiser the hard and fast arrange-
ment which had been effected through the agency
of the Prince of Eeuss.

And now the German officers swarmed openly
in the streets of Sofia and took up their quarters
at the Bulgarian war office. The meaning of the
signs and portents could not be mistaken by
anybody but a simpleton. It was common
knowledge throughout Bulgaria that their Czar
was about to throw in his lot with the Huns.

FERDINAND AND THE FARMER

" It is a policy which wiU compromise your own dynasty ^
and may cost you your head." — Stambulivski, a Bulgarian
Farmer,

CHAPTEE XXV
FERDINAND AND THE FARMER

BEFOEE finally and openly declaring himself
on the side of the Huns, Ferdinand was
forced to receive a deputation consisting of five
of the most powerful men in Bulgaria. They
were the leaders of five of the ten parties which
divide Bulgarian politics : namely GueschofE
(Nationalists), Daneff (Progressive Liberals),
Malinoff (Democrats), Zanoif (Eadicals), and
Stambulivski (Country Party). They had come to
warn him that Bulgaria was opposed to his policy
of active intervention with the Central Powers,
and minced no words in fulfilling their task.
They made it abundantly plain that at least
half of Bulgaria was opposed to his action, and
that he would suffer such consequences as he had
always dreaded since his arrival in Bulgaria if he
persisted in his folly.

The ball was opened by Malinoff, who was

255

256 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

Prime Minister of Bulgaria at the time when Fer-
dinand declared himself Czar.

" The policy being conducted by the Govern-
ment," he said, " is a policy of adventure which
tends to throw Bulgaria into the arms of Germany,
either spurring her to an attack on Serbia or else
forcing upon her a neutrality which is desired by
Germany. This policy is contrary to the senti-
ments and the interests of the country, and if the
Government continues along these lines the dis-
turbances which it will provoke will be very
serious. For these reasons, after having appealed
to the Government in vain, we request Your
Majesty to call the Chamber together immedi-
ately, and we further ask that a Coalition be
called to guarantee the country against any rash
adventure."

The King listened in silence and made no reply.
Then with a nod he invited Stambulivski to speak.
The head of the Agrarian party, a rough and
haughty man, very popular with the masses of
the Bulgarian peasants from whom he has sprung,
and who has only recently set aside the peasant's
costume for the dress of the citizen, rose and
addressed the King with vigour : —

" In the name of the workers in the fields of
Bulgaria I wish to add to the words of my col-
league, Malinoff, that the Bulgarians hold you
personally responsible, rather than your Govern-

FEEDINAND Amy THE FAEMEE 257

inent, for the disastrous adventure of 1913. If
a similar adventure were to be repeated the cata-s-
trophe would this time be beyond remedy. Again
the responsibility would lie with your policy,
which is contrary to the well-being of the country,
and the country would not fail to call you to
account in person. In order to make it quite
clear what is the wish of your country I present
in writing to Your Majesty its exact expression."

Next came Zanoff , the uncompromising Eadical,
who said, " I had sworn I would never set foot
in your palace. If I have come to-day it is be-
cause the interests of the country, higher than
my private principles, have obliged me to do so.
What I have to say Your Majesty can read in this
paper which I present in the name of my party."
He then presented a memorandum similar in
content to that of the Agrarians. The King read
this too and continued to keep silent.

Gueschoff, Prime Minister during the first
Balkan war, followed: —

" Your Majesty, I, too, declare myself to be
fully in agreement with what Stambulivski has
already said. However hard his words may have
seemed, they nevertheless express in their simple,
uncultivated frankness, unacquainted with the
formalities of etiquette, our common thoughts.
We, all of us representatives of the Opposition,
consider the present policy contrary to the seiiti-

R

258 FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

ments and interests of the country, for, by spurring
it on to make common cause with Germany, it
brings it into hostility with mighty Russia, who was
our liberator, and the adventure into which the
country will be hurled will cost it its future. We
disapprove in the most absolute manner of this
policy, and we, too, request that the Sobranje be
summoned and that a Ministry may be formed
having the co-operation of all parties."

Dr. Daneff, who succeeded Gueschoff, but re-
signed when the attack on Serbia and Greece
failed, spoke in the same strain.

Having heard them all the King replied : —

" I have listened to your threatenings, and I
will refer them to the Prime Minister, that he
may take cognizance of them and know what
to decide."

There was an awkward pause, which Ferdinand
attempted to fill by passing some remarks about
the crops to Stambulivski. But the attention of
the giant farmer was riveted on something more
than agriculture.

" This," he said, " is not the moment to talk
of these things. I say again to Your Majesty, that
the country will not have a policy of adventure
such as cost it so dear in 1913. This policy is,
moreover, yours. Before 1913 we believed you a
great diplomatist, but we have seen what your
diplomacy brought us. You have taken advan-

FERDINAND AND THE FARMER 269

tage of all the holes in the Constitution to get the
direction of the country in your own hands.
Your ministers count for nothing ; you alone are
the author of this policy, and you alone will
have the responsibility of it."

" The policy I have decided to follow," the King
frigidly replied, " is the one which I consider the
best and the most advantageous for the country."

" It is a policy which can only lead to disaster,"
replied the farmer, " which will bring about new
catastrophes, and will compromise not only the
future of the country, but of your own dynasty,
and which may cost you your head ! "

The King measured with his eyes this country-
man who spoke such weighty words.

" Do not trouble yourself about my head. It is
an old one. Rather think of your own," said the
King, with the shadow of a scornful smile, as he
moved away.

But Stambulivski replied : " My head matters
little, sire ; I am only thinking of the country's."

But Ferdinand chose to disregard the warning.
His choice was already made, and a few days later
he was figuring before the world once more in the
uncongenial guise of Ferdinand the War Lord.

FERDINAND AS WAR LORD

" Your Majesty's nation in arms, under the guidance of its
iUustrunts War Lord, has added one sublime leaf of glory to
another in the history of Bulgaria.^' — The Kaiseb.

CHAPTEE XXVI
FERDINAND AS WAR LORD

THE world has recently been treated to the
sublime spectacle of a meeting of the
Shoddy Czar and the Bloodstained Kaiser at
Msh, the ancient capital of down-trodden Serbia,
where the two monarchs, united only by the
nefarious nature of the enterprise in which they
are engaged, exchanged compliments of a dan-
gerous irony. It was characteristic of Ferdinand
that he should veil his impudent jibe under the
screen of a dead language, and refer to his
partner in crime as " Victor et gloriosus," which,
if it means anything, signifies, " Conqueror and
braggart."

The Kaiser, for his part, stooped to no such
refinement of sarcasm. He made Ferdinand a
field-marshal of the German Army, referring to
the " glorious triumphal march of his nation, under
its illustrious War Lord." In conferring his new

263

264 FEKDINAJSTD OF BULGAEIA

rank upon Ferdinand he said, " I am, with my
army, happy that you, by accepting it, have
become ' One of us.' "

The brutal irony of WiLhelm II was probably
accepted by crafty Ferdinand as one more added
to the long list of insults he has received at the
Kaiser's hands. The Czar of Bulgaria has had all
sorts of good qualities claimed for him by his
admirers, but the most servile of his flatterers has
never ventured to claim that he has anything of
the soldier in him. That he neglected the com-
mon employment of the youth of his time and his
class for the fascination of the study of nature, and
that military matters roused in him the deepest
aversion, is conceded by friend and foe alike.

He has never been able to understand the
elements of military theory or practice, and as
Stambulofl pointed out in the Press interview
which gave him so much offence, he was incapable
of understanding his Minister for War. Add to
that the fact that he is a timorous man, and the
whole force of irony contained in the apparent
fulsomeness of the Kaiser's words can be grasped.

His own Commander-in-Chief, the great General
Savoff, summed up his military qualifications in
an interview shortly after the conclusion of the
Treaty of Bucarest, that is a standing testimonial
to the Bulgarian Czar's soldier-like qualities.

" Wliat can you do," groaned the Bulgarian

FEEDINAND AS WAR LORD 265

soldier, " with a man who always lives in bodily
fear — ^fear of assassination, fear of disease, fear of
accident ? You cannot think what a job it was
to keep up our troops' enthusiasm for a king who
dare not look upon a wounded soldier, who can
never be persuaded to go mthin a mile of a
hospital, who trembles at the sound of the guns,
and hides himself in a railway carriage, in which
he flits from place to place, always keeping as far
as possible from the front."

This short and forcible summary of Ferdinand's
behaviour in time of war is only at fault since it
falls short of the actual details of his supreme
cowardice. No greater physical coward has
existed in modern times. Fear lives with him
always ; it is a disease rather than a frame of
mind which stern resolution might overcome.
He is sick at the sight of shed blood, he can no
more help trembling at the sound of the cannon
than a timid young girl.

One of my most vivid recollections of him is
of a struggle with this craven fear which took
place in the sight of a very considerable crowd.
It happened curiously enough at Brussels, where
I saw him in 1910. He was then, as always, most
interested in aviation, and in a weak moment
had engaged to make a flight with the Belgian
pilot Delamines. Up to that time no king had
ever ascended in an aeroplane, and Ferdinand

266 FEEDINAND OF BULGARIA

was probably impelled to make Mb rash engage-
ment by his desire to be the first monarch to fly.

But when the time came for him to enter the
machine, he was possessed by nothing but fear.
One could only sympathize with him, bo pitiable
a spectacle was he in his terror. His face was
livid, and his thin lips were ashen grey. His
jaunty walk had completely gone, and he tottered
to his seat as though he were going to the gallows.

With a supreme effort he gasped, '* I am too
fat to fly, but let us fly nevertheless." It did not
sound jocular, but pathetic. But he was in for it,
and was strapped to his seat. There was a cheer
when the aeroplane rose, and the Czar of Bulgaria,
with eyes tightly shut, soared off. Two circuits of
the aerodrome he made and then descended to
earth more dead than alive. A flask was offered
him as he dismounted, and with unaffected joy
he drained it, and the colour came back to his
cheeks. The reaction set in, and he was sprightly
in his satisfaction at the feat he had accomplished.

Nothing could have been more evident of his
will to do bold things, and of the craven fear that
held him back from his wish. It is not surpris-
ing, therefore, to find that he placed himself at the
head of his army on the outbreak of the Balkan
war, and sallied forth against the Turks determined
to do or die. The very first sight of a wounded
Bulgarian soldier killed all the martial fervour in

The first King to fly. Ferdinand with Delamines,
at Brussels, in 1910.

By courtesy of " The Daily Mirror." [To face page a66.

FEEDINAND AS WAE LOED 207

Mm, and thenceforward, like the Duke of Plaaa
Toro,

He led his regiments from behind.
He found it less exciting.

The stories of his prowess as Commander-in-
Chief of the Bulgarian Army reveal him as a
pitiful mixture of craven cowardice and arrogant
self-sufficiency. He hovered continually on the
fringe of the field of action in his luxurious train,
and exercised a restraining influence on the enter-
prise of his generals and on the courage of his
troops. His tongue was forever dripping cant
phrases about humanity, he was all composed of
compunction as timorous as it was base. But
he never lost sight of his one object in waging war ;
everything was subordinated to his overwhelming
desire to enter Constantinople at the head of a
victorious army.

The first Balkan war was begun as a war of
liberation. In a few months Ferdinand had con-
verted it into a war of conquest. His punish-
ment was reaped in the result, for those operations
that might reasonably be ascribed to a desire to
rescue the Balkan Christians from the Turkish
yoke were crowned with success ; while his
attempts at conquest ended in a humiliating re-
verse.

The climax of his unworthy terrors came when.

268 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

the Bulgarians were encamped opposite the Turks
at Chatalja, and the uncleanliness and neglect of
both armies resulted in a visitation of cholera.
Before that scourge Ferdinand fled, still insisting
on maintaining control of the operations. But
he would receive no message from the infected
camp, and adopted precautions that made the
lips of his very toadies curl with scorn. His
timorous precautions prevented his generals from
capturing Adrianople months before that strong-
hold really fell, while his explanation that he
wished to avoid unnecessary bloodshed deceived
no one. During all this fighting he had to bear
the contrast afforded by his heir, who, to do him
justice, bore his part in the war as became a
prince and the heir to a throne.

His experience at the siege of Adrianople
afforded him the luxury of a new terror. At that
siege, as the history of warfare will tell, bombs
were for the first time dropped from aeroplanes
upon troops and buildings beneath. The practice
appealed to Ferdinand's lively imagination, and
struck a new terror into his cowardly soul. He
lived in daily dread of an attack from the sky, for
the elaborate precautions he took to avoid any
contact with King Death did not cover the risk of
death from above.

The sequel was witnessed when Ferdinand and
his Bulgars arrayed themselves in the Great War

FEEDINAND AS WAE LOED 269

on the side of the Teuton Powers and on that of
Bulgaria's hereditary enemy, Turkey. The haunt-
ing dread of an aeroplane raid upon Sofia was with
him night and day. He lost no timje in appealing
to the Germans for a Zeppelin to aid the Bulgarian
operations, and his request was granted.

In due course the great airship arrived at Sofia,
and its commander requested from the Czar that
he should be given instructions as to what part of
the battle. front he should visit. The reply was
that for the present he should remain where he
was for the protection of Sofia, that is. Czar
Ferdinand, from the dangers of an air raid. It is
pleasant to reflect that the French aeroplanes
came, nevertheless, and did no little damage to
Ferdinand's capital. Some day, perhaps, we shall
know how the Czar comported himself during their
visit.

Such, then, is the military prowess of the man
whom the Kaiser jeeringly termed " an illustrious
War Lord." Not even Ferdinand himself, with all
his marvellous self-sufficiency, could miss the
point of that arrogant sneer. And Ferdinand is
a Bourbon, who " remembers nothing and forgetvS
nothing." It will be strange if the mighty War
Lord does not one day repent him of jesting so
open and ill-timed.

FERDINAND IN EXTREMIS

" / am, with my army, happy that you have become okk
of ITS." — ^The Kaiser.

CHAPTEE XXVII
FERDINAND IN EXTREMIS

THE entry of the Bulgarians into the Great
War was sudden, fierce and effective. They
threw themselves with characteristic ardour upon
the Serbians, who, attacked from three quarters
at once, defended themselves sternly. They could
not expect to prevail against the overwhelming
odds against them, but they took heavy toll of
their oppressors, and especially of their detested
foes the Bulgarians.

The expedition of the Allied Powers from
Salonica came too late to save Serbia, or even
appreciably to delay her downfall. Once again
the principal fighting against the French and
British troops, who had advanced from Salonica
in the hope of saving the railway to Nish, was
done by the Bulgarians. They were as reckless
as they were barbarous in their fighting, and
though they drove the Allies back, they lost out
of all proportion to the damage they inflicted.

273 s

274 FEEDINAm) OF BULGAEIA

Thus in a very few weeks the Bulgarians had
gained possession of the coveted portion of Thrace
and Macedonia held by the Serbians, and were
brought to a pause on the Greek frontier. In all
this fighting, needless to say, Ferdinand had
taken no part, except to issue some of those
vainglorious proclamations of which samples have
been quoted in previous chapters.

With the Serbians utterly crushed and the Greeks
quaking before the fear of an invasion and of the
Allied forces encamped at Salonica, a period was
reached in the Bulgarian operations. Sofia was
converted into a city of mourning, and death
was spread through all the Bulgarian villages.
For the third time in a few years the young men
of the country had been decimated.

In the meantime the Germans had converted
Sofia into a Prussian barrack town. There was
no longer any concealment ; it was only too
apparent to the Bulgarians that the Schwaba
had come to stay. The Bulgarian troops on
the Greek frontier had been equipped with
German uniforms and German arms in prepara-
tion for the invasion of Greece, the excuse being
that Bulgaria was experiencing a shortage in
such equipment.

The Bulgarians also shared the booty of the
Serbian cities and farms, the goods and stock
of the conquered Serbians being removed after

FEEDINAim IN EXTEEMIS 275

the thorough and scientific method employed
in the sacking of Belgium. But there was
already a great scarcity of food in Bulgaria,
where the German methods of conservation of
supplies by rationing were quickly introduced.

Already Bulgaria was paying the penalty for
interference against her old friends and bene-
factors. There were deep murmurs everywhere at
the Teutonizing of the country, at the rations
of black bread issued only to ticket-holders, and
at the arrogance of the all-pervading Germans.

Very unwillingly the Bulgars looked forward
to the time when they should be called upon to
attack the allied armies in their strong position
at Salonica, and perhaps to force Greece into
hostility. That was not the direction in which
they wished to make their next advance, for
their ill-chosen friends the Turks were the victims
of their preference in this respect. Ferdinand
was again in a difficult position with the people
whom he had adopted, and must go to his new
friends for help.

He got it in the shape of plentiful German
and Austrian honours. He received the hall-
mark of Hundom in September, 1915, when,
apropos of nothing at all, the Kaiser con-
ferred the Iron Cross upon him. But now he
was to be made a field-marshal in both the
German and Austrian armies, and to entertain

276 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

the Kaiser at a memorable banquet in the
conquered city of Nish.

A remarkable description of that ceremonious
meeting has been published by a journalist who
had the hardihood to obtain entry, and depicts
the Kaiser as an aged and broken man, cough-
ing continually, and looking small and almost
pitiful by the side of the burly Ferdinand. In
terms of fulsome insincerity Ferdinand greeted
him.

" The world has learned to know with surprise
and admiration the strength of Germany and
her allies, and believes in the invincibility of the
German Army under the guidance and leadership
of its Kaiser.

" I hope that the year 1916 may bring lasting
peace, the sacred fruits of our victories, a peace
which will allow my people to co-operate in future
in the work of Kultur ; but, if fate should impose
a continuation of the war, then my people in
arms will be ready to do its duty to the last.

" Ave Imperator, Caesar et Eex. Victor et
Gloriosus es. Nissa antiqua omnes Orientis populi
te salutant redemptorem ferentem oppressis
prosperitatem atque salutem."

Long live Kaiser Wilhelm !

(Hail Emperor, Caesar and King. Thou art
victor and glorious [Gloriosus really means brag-
gart]. In ancient Nish all the peoples of the east

FEEDINAKD IN EXTEEMIS 277

salute thee, the redeemer, bringing prosperity
and salvation to the oppressed.)

The Kaiser's reply was couched in the same
strain, and laid special emphasis upon the fact
that the honours conferred by Germany and
Austria upon Ferdinand had made him " One of
Us."

1^0 phrase could have been more expressive.
Ferdinand had become, for the time being, a
minor German Prince. He had given over his
adopted people to the German yoke, and Bulgaria
had become as much part of Germany as Bavaria
or Saxony. That, and nothing less, was the
outcome of a willing treachery that was prompted
by wild dreams of self-aggrandisement that are
doomed never to see fulfilment.

And there, for the present, Ferdinand of
Bulgaria must be left.

It is difficult to harmonize his present position
with the ambitions that have principally made
his life and career remarkable. Those ambitions
could only be realized by the extinction of the
Ottoman Power in Europe. He has taken up
arms against the forces which are pledged to
bring about that consummation. He has linked
himself in arms with the Power he has planned
throughout a long reign to despoil. The path
before him is a very obscure and tortuous one
even for the Shoddy Czar, whose word is as

278 FEEDINAND OF BULGAEIA

valueless as his signature to a solemn pledge.

What inducement can he advance to his people
to continue this war, from which they have
nothing more to gain, and which has already
involved them in such heavy loss of life ? There
can be no other inducement than the strong
constraint imposed by the German forces who
have taken possession of the Balkans. It is
dangerous to prophesy with a man so elusive
as Ferdinand, but he appears now to be on the
threshold of the most difficult stage in his career.
He has strong enemies within his own State, and
will have to encounter the most bitter opposition
from the open enemies arrayed in arms against
him.

Some, at least, of his friends are palpably
lukewarm. No genuine tie could possibly link
Turkey with Bulgaria. On the other hand, the
just anger of his enemies is a common motive
to ensure his thorough and lasting punishment.
His people may hope, by a timely repentance,
to escape the consequence of their cowardly
transgressions ; but not so Ferdinand. He is the
supreme offender, and must pay the maximum
penalty.

It was not to end in such an impasse that his
mother instructed him in the mysteries of king-
craft, and advised him throughout his early
years of insecurity in Bulgaria. Had she lived.

FEEDINAND IN EXTEEMIS 279

he might have chosen differently, for Clementine,
daughter of France as she was, could never have
endured the supremacy of German influence
which Ferdinand's policy has brought about. It
may well be that her death was the turning-point
in his career, the beginning of a downward march
on which one well-defined stage has already been
marked, the reverse of the second Balkan war.

For many years the influence of the Shoddy
Czar has been a malign one. His character, his
training, his ideals, and the barbarism of the
people he governs have made Bulgaria a lasting
threat to the peace of Europe. One of the many
good results we may hope to derive from the
war will be the disappearance from the realm
of international politics of so unscrupulous and
autocratic a ruler as Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

Finis.

fiutUr & Tanner From* aod L^ondao

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